Small Spaces
by lyssalu
Summary: Sound really carries in small, echo-y spaces.  This, on top of the cramping, heat, and awkward positioning, can make things pretty...uncomfortable, but it's not all bad.  Sometimes closeness is all it takes to get things running again.
1. Small Spaces

**A/N**: This story contains offensive language and graphic sexual content. If that isn't your thing, don't read it. Small Spaces is not meant to be a cutesy romantic story – it's awkward and might make some readers feel uncomfortable. Small Spaces is also not a story that's easy to self-insert into; the Shepard being featured has a very distinct (and possibly offensive) personality (no, not my personality), and it might not be what you're looking for. If that's the case, there are a lot of other fantastic, on-going Shrios fics out there, two of my favorites being: A Dance of Minds by Katerina Kintari and How Fornax Changed My Life by kiwibliss. Give them a read.

This fic has kind of grown. A lot. I had never intended for it to be multi-chaptered. This was a one shot that I wrote just to see if I could. This was my first time writing not only _fanfic_, but fiction in general. That being said, this first chapter was kind of outdated. I've rewritten it using the same general idea, while making it a little more a part of the overall story. It kind of stuck out like a sore thumb – Shepard's personality wasn't quite right (I was still figuring it out at that point), it's lacking the style I'd developed through gaining more experience, and it was very inconsistent. _I've_ been led to believe that I've misled people, so I'm fixing that.

Small Spaces is a grouping of interrelated one-shots that primarily detail the developing relationship between Thane and Shepard. It will also feature a series of interludes that are told through the perspectives of other characters. Besides Shepard and Thane, this fic will also focus on other squadmates – primarily Jacob. Thanks to all of you who have read and liked it this far – you guys really motivate me. And to any of my new readers, I hope you enjoy!

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Mass Effect.

* * *

Commander Shepard stared at her access terminal, the orange glow blending with a morbid sense of perfection into the scars that lined her face. Her mind was racing just as quickly as her eyes flitted back and forth over the holographic images on the screen, and her eyes saw text, but her brain was too wrecked to comprehend it. Her stomach panged and she swallowed, the gulping noise the only distinguishable sound that filled her darkened cabin.

Commander Shepard was falling apart.

The office chair she was sitting in squeaked against the material of her pants at the continued shaking of her leg; up-down, back-forth, up-down, back-forth. The muscles in her thigh twitched at every movement and her lip curled; she didn't like the way that felt, because it felt unfamiliar. The muscle wasn't the same. The _bone_ wasn't the same.

Everything was unfamiliar now – _different_.

She flexed her fingers – the fingers that were much stubbier than she could remember them being – and inhaled as she clicked at the terminal's holographic interface. She could feel tension in her body, knotting up at her shoulders, and knew that she was stressed. But she'd held it together, somehow – everything was okay. She hadn't even cried, no matter how much she _wanted_ to.

Because she did want to cry – she _did. _Shepard wasn't suppressing it, she just physically wasn't capable. She leaned in toward her monitor and stared at it, the screen's proximity making her eyes cross; maybe if she didn't blink…

She was being so childish. She sat back in her chair, her eyes still glued to her monitor; she didn't want to turn away from it, because she knew that if she did, she'd look in that _spot_. She couldn't face it again.

_Ugh_.

She put her hand over her eyes and slapped out at it, knocking the picture frame off of her desk in the process; she heard the clatter and a warm feeling erupted in her stomach, but was soon squelched when his voice echoed around in her head.

"_Maybe you're the one who's not thinking straight. You've changed, but I still know where my loyalties lie."_

She hadn't changed.

_No_.

He had.

She couldn't have changed; she'd been _dead_.

But he'd…

He was wrong.

Those loyalties he'd talked about – they weren't with her, and they never had been. Yeah, she'd expected Garrus to come running back, and she'd been very deeply mollified by Tali's return despite the Cerberus connection, but out of all of them, she'd thought that Kaidan would be the one to stay by her side. He'd _trusted_ her, fucking _knew_ her better than everyone else.

But his message. The _message_. The message where he'd attempted some fucked up version of an apology and had offered to get back with her if she _proved_ herself. The one where he'd confessed to seeing a woman on a single date and feeling guilty about it and had apologized for it while simultaneously hanging it over her head. The one where he'd _romanticized_ the night before Ilos and…

So maybe he hadn't changed.

Ugh.

No.

Shepard was done.

Kaidan could kiss her ass – and so could the whole fucking Alliance, for all she cared. They'd practically fed her to Cerberus _alive_. If Kaidan wanted to blame someone, he should be blaming himself – blaming _them_. Because they'd given up on her. They'd left her.

They'd _abandoned_ her.

On some level, she knew that her rationale was wrong. But on a deeper level, she didn't give a fuck.

…So maybe she had changed.

She slammed her hands against the desk and jerked away from it, the clapping sound of the impact so loud that it startled her. Her chair had rolled out from behind her, and she stood there for a moment, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Her lip pouted and her brows were scrunched so low on her forehead that it made her head pound, and her fists twitched at her sides.

She straightened and breathed in again, slow and deep, before turning to walk down the stairs that led to the main living area of her quarters. A couch, a secondary desk, a giant ass bed, a shitty skylight – she kept it dark because she hated how much it looked like a fucking bachelor's pad. The artificial blue lighting emanating from the fish tank that lined an entire _wall_ was the only thing that illuminated the room, and she walked toward it, her hand hovering above the feed button.

The fish had died again.

A broken laugh tore its mangled way up through her throat. Of course she'd forgotten to feed them again. The shining beacon of humanity who was supposed to save the _fucking galaxy_ couldn't even save a few fish. They were just floating there at the top, along with the food she'd just tried to feed them – helpless victims to Shepard's increasing…lack of _care_.

No, she thought about this shit too much to call it _not caring_. She just felt…stupid. She felt blocked. She felt like she'd been dwelling on things too much, thinking in circles too much, waking up in cold sweats too much, not _dying_ too much. No, not being dead enough.

And that felt weird.

It all felt weird, like she wasn't supposed to be here anymore.

Because she really wasn't supposed to be, and she wasn't blind to that.

She'd lost her ability to compartmentalize. Thoughts were leaking into other thoughts and stupid things just kept spewing from her mouth, and _man had she become awfully trigger happy_ – God, it was happening again. The thought spilling, looping – the _thought constipation_.

And she knew what it was, too.

It was that green, scaly _son of a bitch_.

She just couldn't stop thinking about him.

Because they were like, together or something? She didn't know. She'd had a lot of word vomit in his presence. A lot of…thought spilling. A lot of stupidity. It was all moving fast, and thinking about it made her head spin.

_But she liked him so much_.

So much that she had been avoiding him. She'd been avoiding Thane for a couple of days, actually. She rubbed at her cheeks with her hands, the gloves cooling the creeping blush that had caused them to heat and tingle.

Yeah, it was Mordin's fault. _All of it_. Because the creep was trying to get her _laid_. She groaned and flopped onto her bed, taking a moment to unzip her shirt and rip it off. It'd gotten hot, really suddenly, and despite her gain in _stupid_, she knew why. Mordin had sent her pamphlets explaining drell anatomy and sexual habits. She'd seen enough drell dick to last her a life time.

_Or two, in your case._

It was really creepy that she was hearing Miranda in her head at a time like this.

Shepard covered her eyes and whined, the firm mattress beneath her not enough to relax her stiffened body.

She didn't understand a fucking thing about this situation. She didn't understand why she couldn't even stand to be in the same room as Thane, let alone have any more conversations with him. It was…weird, because she was a _pursuer_. She was annoying and confrontational and inappropriate and Goddammit she got what she _wanted_. Shepard had been the one who had suggested being "more than just friends" in the first place (not even entirely serious, but pleasantly surprised when he'd taken her up on it), but right now, she didn't know what the fuck she was doing.

Shepard had always been that confident, in your face bitch – but now she was hiding out in her room because she was embarrassed over looking at drell dicks and some tit-less lizards. She'd even covered up EDI with a shirt an hour ago because it'd just dawned on her that the AI knew _everything_, and the fact that she let the fucking computer _embarrass_ her spoke levels.

…Could AI see through shirts?

She groaned again and peaked through her fingers at the spot where the computer normally materialized.

It was gone, for now.

Good.

Shepard hated the fact that she had balls. Or maybe she hated the fact that they'd shriveled upon her curiosity getting the better of her. It was the pronounced anatomic differences between drell and humans that was getting to her – the titless lizard thing. No breasts.

They didn't have boobies.

_"Mammary glands are unnecessary for drell because this species are born with the capacity to consume whole foods upon birth."_

Of all the text book facts to take residence in her idiot fucking brain…

_Ugh_.

Shepard wasn't body shy, but she didn't like this idea of having weird ass skin flaps on her chest when drell didn't have any. It was gross. She felt like the weird one. Fuck tits. Fuck _nipples_. Had Thane ever even seen nipples before?

_Goddammit_.

There was a man out there who didn't like boobs, and he was interested in her.

Bad news.

She looked down her tank top, one hand lifting the collar of the shirt over her head, the other smooshing a boob up and over. It jiggled back into place.

_Ew_, it was weird.

And thus, she was ignoring Thane.

She chewed her lip and a thought occurred to her, it being one that made her immediately more uncomfortable. Mordin had probably given Thane human porn. Oh, how _awkward_. And yet another cause for avoidance. Perhaps that was why he hadn't called her out on her shit yet.

Or maybe he didn't want to get intimate with her, ever. Maybe she'd misinterpreted his boundaries. Maybe what they had was purely _emotional_ (her nose scrunched at the thought) and he'd never wanted to seek out anything physically rewarding from their relationship in the first place.

Why would he want to? He'd had a wife, and he's got his…solipshism.

It wasn't like they'd ever talked about it. No, the things they talked about were much less personal, and a lot more geared toward the drell trying to open her mind to the wonders of philosophy. Though he'd once mentioned his uncertainties – of admitting that he was not sure of where to go. And ever the dumbass, she'd brushed him off and told him to play it by ear.

She'd all but shushed him every time something like this came up, so it really was her fault.

She grabbed a pillow and put it over her face. She was such a bitch for being the one to react like this. He'd made so many attempts to talk to her – he'd even asked her to his room for dinner via extranet mail tonight. And she'd ignored it, like the turd that she was.

Shepard grumbled into her pillow, and her tummy rumbled in response. She hadn't been out of her room since the message, and subsequently hadn't eaten since morning. She crawled out of bed and adjusted her bra straps, the commander wobbly on her feet. She'd talk to him tomorrow or something.

Well, maybe.

Shepard enjoyed nights like this one. Being alone on the ship unless she was holed up in her quarters was unusual given that people generally went to bed when they either could or wanted; the differentiation between night and day was pretty much nonexistent.

For as much as this was true, though, there were still patterns. There was about three hours each day where everyone was asleep, and when she actually had the time to be out and about during those few hours, she took advantage of it.

It wasn't that she was a loner – she just never got to be alone unless she was asleep. It kind of came with the job.

Shepard squatted and dug around in the mess hall fridge, a spoon in her mouth and her fingers clutching at a pudding cup. She'd taken the time to write her name on it so that no one would steal it; that shit was hers.

She closed the fridge with a hip and plopped down into a chair, her free hand automatically shooting out to grasp the data pad that she'd left on the table earlier that day. It took mere moments for her to immerse herself in the info detailing her next "mission"; Joker had already plotted the course, and it was now just another waiting game.

She sniffed and rolled her eyes. Another Cerberus operative getting themselves into shit, imagine that. He'd been captured by the Blue Suns, and he had info the Illusive Man wanted to keep secret. She didn't give a shit either way what happened, but she'd considered doing it because the Illusive Man had said pretty please.

That, and things had also been kinda slow lately. She was bored. And she wanted to get away from Thane. Being off ship eliminated any chance of running into him.

Shepard hunched her shoulders, her thoughts interrupted when she heard the quiet pitter-patter behind her. Marking the footfalls was easy – Thane had a very distinctive gait, and she could tell that he'd purposefully made noise as he walked in order to alert her to his presence. She allowed herself a smile at the courtesy and quickly relaxed her stature; sure, he may have had her, but she was going to make every attempt to appear as unruffled as possible.

"Siha, I am surprised to see you about. As of late, you've been but a ghost."

She shivered at the sound of his voice and covered it up by inhaling another spoonful of pudding, and as she did so, he took a seat across from her. She calmly put down her spoon and made eye contact. He looked determined – he was unwilling to let her slip away again. He was after an explanation – and she knew that the jig was up.

"Just going over a mission brief. What about you? It's pretty late." She raised her eyebrows at him and fingered her spoon. She'd been able to keep her voice level.

"It seems that after all of the time I've spent alone in my life, my conversational skills have begun to atrophy. I find it difficult to discuss common topics of interest with the rest of the crew. I take my meals after they've gone."

Interesting. He'd wanted her to eat with him. And they always had talked just fine. She rubbed at her arm as a silence fell between them, one that was for once uncomfortable. She kept catching Thane stealing glances at her, the look in his eye curious, before it dawned on her that before now, she'd never really looked casual in front of him. He was creeping her out; it made her feel like she was being analyzed for her skin's weird pigmentation and lack of texture compared to his.

_Ugh_.

Enough fucking pussyfooting, because he clearly wasn't giving up until she got everything all out in the open.

She rubbed her bare arms and cleared her throat, taking a second to mentally prepare for this mindfuck of a conversation.

"Listen, Thane…I've got a, uh, question for you."

He blinked at her, his two sets of eyelids flicking in perfect unity. The curiosity he had was palpable, but he showed no confusion. She knew he knew what this was about. "Yes, Siha?"

"One second. I need you to be ready for this." She smiled crookedly at him and shrugged before she started cracking her knuckles. He was always so calm, so cool, so damn _collected_. He had an excellent poker face. In this moment, Shepard aspired to be a little more like him. "Okay, you ready?"

"of course."

She'd said she had _a_ question, but it was more like a litany of questions. The commander popped her spoon into her mouth and played at looking like she was thinking really hard. She settled for the one that seemed the most direct and the least likely to make her look like a fucking idiot.

Around the spoon in her mouth, "Mordin talked to you about anything embarrassing lately?"

It came out sounding like she had a speech impediment and she couldn't stop herself from cringing.

He blinked at her again, unmoving, poker facing. She really wanted to know what he was thinking. Then he smiled, and it was contagious. "Certainly he has spoken of nothing more embarrassing to me than what he has spoken of to you, Siha."

Well played.

It seemed he wasn't going to come right out and say it; if he did that, it might make things too easy on her. He wanted her to say it, because she'd been flighty as fuck over it. She knew what he was up to. Shepard dropped the spoon from her mouth and drummed the table with her fingertips.

Seemingly in response to her movement, he leaned forward slightly, inclined his head, and placed his cheek in his hand; his movements were so delicate that they were enough to inspire awe in her. His elbows rested easily on the smooth surface of the alloy table top. Sitting immediately across from him, Shepard felt her resolve slipping.

Okay, she needed to just blurt it out.

"Being coy, Thane?" Her relentless tapping faltered as the words left her pouty lips.

But she couldn't.

"Perhaps."

She was being coy too.

She snickered at him, a full-blown grin breaking out across her face. _This_ was why she liked him so much. He didn't necessarily make her feel comfortable (actually, he made her feel really awkward), but she was still able to find comfort _in_ him. It was his subtlety and his willingness to make her squirm…it was his sense of humor.

At first she hadn't gotten it, but she understood now. When she'd first met him, his jokes had been difficult to catch; he'd fired them off in such deadpan that it was easy to question whether or not what he'd said was meant to be funny. A couple of times in the past he had taken her completely off guard, causing her laugh to bubble upward a few long seconds after he'd said something, when she finally understood.

But she knew him better now. She knew he knew what she was talking about. She knew that Mordin had approached him as well – and yeah, he was still interested. Maybe even more so, because the seed of desire had been planted within him. And so he was toying with her; he wouldn't play this game if it were serious, if _he_ were serious. This was just his way of showing her that he had no concerns about moving forward.

She suddenly felt so fucking confident.

"What did you think? We still…?" She leaned back in the chair that was making her ass feel numb and stretched her legs out like feelers under the table, seeking him out. She wanted to make him _react_. Her foot found a leather-clad ankle and she brushed against it in playful contact. His lip quirked, the only sign he gave that her touch had even registered, and he opened his mouth to speak.

"Indeed we are, my silly siha. I'm wounded that you could be capable of thinking any differently."

"Mmhm." She tried to move her foot farther up his calf and she suddenly wished that her legs were a little longer. She slid from her chair and her arms flung out to catch the table and she bit her tongue, the blush that had been a permanent part of her face that night deepening.

She thought she heard him snort – but other than that, still no reaction. And she felt so stupid, because it occurred to her that Thane probably thought she was a real weirdo. Here he was playing it cool, so calm, just sitting in front of her in a casualness that she could only someday hope to replicate.

Despite it being embarrassing, it was really, really _hot_. She was tired of this shit – she wanted him to show her that he _wanted_ this.

She settled for bluntness.

"Actually, Thane, this whole interspecies porn pamphlet convo was just an awkward lead in to the real question I've got for you. A proposition, if you will."

He chuckled and cleared his throat. "Ah, how poorly implemented." In the dim lighting, the green of his skin was luminous. Thane was flawlessly stunning, a striped and speckled beauty so alien to Shepard that she caught herself dumbly staring. He moved his ankle against her foot smoothly in response to her and her whole leg jerked, and he drew his hand across the cold, metallic table, caressing it. "You are drawing this out, Siha. I don't wish to wait much longer."

He was playing, and the ball was in her court. She wanted to play, too. She was tired of everything being so _serious_, fucking tired of being so troubled and weighed down by bullshit that was only going to end up killing her again anyway.

And then it hit her.

She was being so apprehensive about this because they were all going to die.

_God_, she really needed to take up smoking again.

They all had a year or less. It didn't matter that Thane had Kepral's – the collectors were going to destroy all of them, and if not those giant fucking bugs, then those giant _squids_. She couldn't stop a reaper invasion – no one could.

So she was going to live it up.

Because it didn't matter, and right now, she had something else on her mind; it had actually been on her mind since she'd first encountered Thane on Illium, although it had been much more innocent in nature then than it was now. She had a proposal to make – she had an agenda to promote.

She could not help the smirk that hauled her plush lips upward, effectively dimpling her cheeks, any more than she could stop the anticipation from building in her stomach. She had butterflies. It had been a long time since she had felt that, and she liked it.

"Fair enough. I'm gonna switch gears a second – swear it's related." She brushed the hair from her eyes and licked her lips. "I remember the first day I met you, bludgeoning my way through Dantius, you know, ever my subtle self; I had no fucking clue what to expect. But I knew I could get you, and I knew I was gonna recruit you – the only thing I wasn't sure of was whether or not you'd be worth the trouble."

Thane smirked at her and raised a brow in silent challenge.

She bit back a laugh; she'd known that that one would hit. "Don't get me wrong, I'd heard you were _good_. I just hadn't seen you in action," she shrugged.

"The panicked comm chatter was fucking hilarious, that argument about who had to go into the vents had me and Jacob in stitches. My interest was _kinda_ piqued, actually, and when moments later you dropped a body on me, you had me. The way you did shit, it was creepy and efficient as _hell_. You were gaining on your target, disposing of mercs, and you had me in your sights _the whole time_. I want you to teach me how to do that, how to…_move around_like that in such small spaces."

"Is that so, Siha?" He leaned back in his chair and smoothed his collar, the small smile never leaving. "I…suppose we could arrange that."

She pulled away from him entirely, her chair scratching across the floor, and stood up. "We've got a couple hours before Mission I'm Bored as Fuck: So I'm Doing TIM's Dirty Work," Shepard trailed her fingers along his arm, bidding him to stand. "We could practice in the ducts."

Thane stood with grace as he smoothed down his jacket, and he looked directly into her eyes. They were close, a hair's breadth away from touching. Shepard couldn't tell who was better at teasing, who had the upper hand. It was a struggle she was beginning to enjoy. He opened his mouth and breathed lightly, words on his tongue.

"Do you think that wise? The only one we'll have…immediate access to is located in the med lab. I'm sure our salarian friend is sleeping." The smile not present on his lips lit up in his eyes, and she could tell that he was up to no good.

Whatever he had on the lesson plan was going to be _noisy_.

"We should now, while we still have time. You never know when a talent like that can come in handy. What if I die on the next mission because you didn't teach me how to sleuth it up in an air duct?" She thought she heard him snort again, but it was obvious that he was going to go along with it. He wouldn't turn her down, no matter how contrived her argument was; they were very much on the same page.

"Ah, now that is reasoning that cannot be denied."

Shepard approached and entered the elevator with a purpose, unbothered by the wait time or the way that Thane was glancing at her from across the small space between them; he leaned casually against a wall of the elevator and crossed his arms, his pink tongue darting out to wet his lips.

The door opened and they stepped out together, and Thane touched her arm to get her attention. The look he gave her was disarming. "That top flatters you, Siha."

She smiled and nodded, uncomfortable with how good a compliment from him made her feel. She grasped his arm and pulled him toward the med lab, the two of them coming upon the door in stealthy silence. She looked back at him and signed; she would go in first to make sure Mordin was sleeping.

Shepard tiptoed in, light on her feet, and felt giddy upon finding the scientist slumped over his desk in quiet exhaustion. His hand lay clasping his latest encased sample and drool dribbled faintly from the corner of his mouth. Looking at him, she suppressed a chortle; he couldn't be comfortable.

It felt good to be sneaking around like a teenager again, like her greatest care in the world was being caught red-handed. She motioned Thane, a finger pressed firmly to her lips; their hushed footfalls lead them to the ventilation shaft. Shepard braced her hands on her knees and peered down, somewhat intimidated by the height; it almost felt like cheating that there was a ladder.

"It appears you'll need to be careful, Siha." Thane whispered, his utterance indicating the white writing that marked the wall immediately in front of them. It was brightened by a single pallid light fixture seemingly meant to bring attention to the text reading simply: KEEP THIS AREA CLEAN.

Shepard didn't miss a beat, continuing the whisper. "Me?" She snorted. "What about you? Scales in strange places…_that's_ bound to be messy."

He laughed shortly and quietly, "Be sure to keep your hair in your head, I hear humans are prone to shedding. Ladies first, Siha."

Shepard took no offense to the comments and moved to step down the ladder, Thane offering her his hand. It struck her that this was the first time she'd actually _felt_ him; when they'd held hands before, hers had always been gloved or covered by armor. She savored the feel, finding nothing unpleasant about it, and tightened her grip around him.

The quality of his skin reminded her momentarily of an old synthetic snakeskin wallet she had once owned back on Earth. His hand was deeply textured; it did not pull or drag at her skin even though it was still kind of rough, as if it were calloused. She wondered what it would feel like elsewhere. His fingers warmed around hers and she began her descent into darkness.

When Shepard's foot reached the final rung of the ladder, she wondered what she was doing. She turned around clumsily and was met with the tinny surface of the duct's wall and realized that if she wanted to go any farther, she'd need to crawl. She ducked down on all fours and proceeded to move forward, what little she could actually see due to the pale lighting lining the wall above her.

God, it was _hot_.

The sound of her hands and knees scuffling sent echoes through the vent, soon accompanied by another set from behind. The duct was slippery and she found herself sliding around fairly often; thus far her technique was proving inadequate. A little further, and Shepard couldn't see a thing.

Shepard stopped moving and squinted. "How do you do this? You are _crazy_."

"I am able to see in the dark better than you are, Siha."

She felt hot and a little disoriented and she placed her forehead against the floor of the vent in an effort to cool it, her form almost mimicking child's pose.

"That so isn't fair," her voice came out muffled and she straightened a little, rolling her shoulders.

Shepard placed one knee forward and felt a roughened hand seize her ankle, tugging her backward and startling her. She was pretty sure she'd just emitted a noise she had never made before; it echoed around her in a symphony of embarrassment, which was soon followed by the quiet sound of Thane's amusement.

Shepard was on her stomach with her arms outstretched before her and she could feel his breath on her ear, the warm movement of air creating a tingling sensation which prickled outward and spread down the surface of her rosy cheeks. She liked that, how _close_ he was.

She wanted more.

His hands were placed on the floor by either side of her face, knees situated outside her hips, and she felt him nuzzle the back of her neck. The sound of his voice filled her ears, enriching her as it rumbled and rasped.

"Turn around, Siha. I wish to see you."

The request was followed by an awkward poking of limbs, the sound this caused amplified in a thundering reverberation. A few moments of fumbling had Shepard and Thane face to face, both breathy and hot. He resituated and placed a knee between her thighs, cuing Shepard to spread her legs as much as possible in the small space they had so that he could rest comfortably between them.

It was pitch black and difficult to _breathe_; if he hadn't have been down there with her, she would have been flipping shit, but he was. She felt…okay. She took a lot of deep breaths and listened to him as he inhaled and exhaled. She was okay. She breathed in again and closed her eyes.

All she could smell was leather, the only sounds she could hear were the elevated pants being emitted by herself and Thane, their breathing mingling together in a frenzied unity; it all at once comforted her and overwhelmed her and when the softness of his lips brushed against hers, she felt _perfect_.

Not bad for a first kiss.

She wrapped her arms around him a little, and then pushed him back, breaking them apart.

"I want to see you, Thane. I _need_ to see you." They were so close together that when she spoke, her lips moved momentarily against his.

Thane propped himself up on one arm and ran his other hand through her hair, the coarse strands tickling his fevered skin. Shepard leaned into the contact, savoring it, and moved her right arm a little behind her head.

There's an idea. She kept her eyes on Thane, dark energy began to pool and prickle at her fingertips. She used her control of biotics to create a light source, flowing from her hand and ebbing in place. She could keep it going for a little while; it would work. It was adequate. And Thane looked _gorgeous_, totally ethereal in the pale blue light.

"That's cheating, Siha."

"What are you gonna do about it?"

"I suppose I'll have to train you, teach you to abide by the rules."

"I have to warn you Thane, I don't care much for rules."

Shepard finalized the short exchange when she bucked her pelvis upward, wrapping her legs around the back of Thane's hips in an effort to pull him closer. The roughness of his leather pants pushed and felt wonderful against the soft material of hers; she could feel how hard he was and her head reeled at the throaty sound of the moan she had shocked out of him. It was deep, dark, and raspy, begging for more with one syllable. She was more than happy to oblige, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him in for another kiss.

Shepard felt his hands in her hair and she opened her mouth against his in hungry desperation; his tongue was on her lips, then in her mouth, exploring. She loved the way his tongue felt, the way it tasted; flavor was heady, reminding her of fine wine. It was more flexible than hers was, a tad longer, and obviously possessed more strength; if she'd been standing, the way he'd delved into her might have made her weak in the knees.

All she could taste, hear, smell, feel, and see was him; he had all five of her senses wrapped around his finger, and he was overloading them, one by one. It seemed like he was all around her; everything felt amplified, bigger and better than anything she'd ever experienced in her _life_.

Every taste of him left her feeling lightheaded, her mouth and nose tingling as if she had just inhaled cinnamon; it made her wonder minutely if oral contact really did cause hallucinations, and if so, how fast acting it would be; she'd honestly thought Mordin had been pulling her leg on that part, but she wasn't so sure anymore.

The thought was cut short when he rocked aggressively against her and she bucked back; apparently drell were as into dry humping as humans were.

Sweat was beginning to bead on her forehead and she could do nothing to prevent the keening noises he was prying from her. She broke off the kiss and moved instead to his jaw, licking and nibbling her way down to the hollow of his neck. He was so pretty there; she delighted in the color and feel of him and she was knowingly taking advantage of the information she had gained from Mordin's pamphlet. Drell were abnormally sensitive in that area, the mere ghost of a touch causing heightened pleasure.

She pulled him down closer and kissed him there roughly, cradling his head in her arms, dragging her tongue and lips across his neck in a slow torture. The taste of him was nice, devoid of any salt; it reminded her of drinking a glass of sparkling water, the tingling sensation not leaving her. He groaned out again, not stopping the roll of his hips or altering the pace they had set. She rose up to meet his every thrust, because she wanted more; craved it. It still wasn't _enough_.

"Thane…Thane, I—_oh_," Shepard's breathing hitched, interrupted by a whimper brought on by another forceful thrust, "it's h—I'm, Thane, I'm too hot. It's too ho—oh, in…ughn…help me…get this _off_." She took her arms away from him and tugged willfully at her shirt.

"Mmm," he buried his face against her and stilled before he spoke, seeming to inhale her scent, his breathing still a little heavy. "The conditions in here feel ideal, to me. If you truly wish to become adept at my skill, you're going to have to…acclimatize."

She whined in frustration, the range of motion in her arms too limited to remove the tank top that was now damply clinging to her skin. She wanted to punch him for still going along with their role play. She felt him smile against her neck and he seemed to take pity on her; his hand moved under her shirt, uncertain, feeling along her ribs and causing goose bumps to rise on her skin.

His hands felt so good against her, the quality of his skin creating the right amount of friction to make her stomach jump and hitch at the touch.

A moment of uncertainty passed within him before he pulled her shirt over her head. He moved to unbutton her pants, and she placed a hand firmly on his to encourage him as she simultaneously struggled to kick off her shoes. Accomplishing removal was an interesting process, limbs poking about chaotically, but it was one they both eventually managed.

That left Shepard in her underwear, and she felt his eyes on her. She once again found herself in the position of wanting to know what he was thinking. A few moments later, and then she didn't care. She just wanted to see him. _All of him_.

"You've got me at a bit of a disadvantage here, Thane."

His hand graced her stomach again and smoothed around to her side; he seemed to marvel at how their skin looked together, how it contrasted, before he gave her an answer.

"So it would seem…how would you rectify that?"

Shepard's hands surged forward and pulled at his jacket, trying in vain to remove it. There were so many flaps and zippers and buckles, and she was so hot, and he was so…

"Ugh, why is this thing so damned _complicated_."

"I could say the same about the contraption adorning your breasts. I haven't the slightest idea as to how I should go about removing it."

Shepard almost _died_ at how cliché sounded but bit it back, choosing instead to smirk, and pressed her index finger down against the clasp in the middle of the "contraption," causing her breasts to be exposed momentarily. She was careful to hide them, her arms wrapping around them quickly in order to block his wandering eyes.

Shrugging out of her bra and careful to keep her arms around them, she effectively kept herself hidden from Thane's view. "You show me yours and I'll show you mine."

This elicited another laugh from him; his siha was on a roll, it seemed. He kissed and suckled at her collar bone, and when he spoke, his voice seemed to reverberate through her.

"What is it that makes you think I want to see them?"

She grabbed his hand and placed it over her breast with her free arm, still keeping from his view with her fingers covering his, and she leaned into him. "That look of longing on your face is a dead giveaway. You're so _curious_ about them." Shepard could tell.

He pulled his hand away, maybe regretfully, Shepard repositioning quickly to remain covered as Thane moved fluidly out of his jacket, unbuckling it far more deftly than she ever could have hoped to. She had to help him peel the material from his shoulders, him balancing awkwardly above her and Shepard groping gracelessly about with one hand.

They probably could have picked a better place to do this, but she didn't care. All she cared about was _seeing_ him; she resisted the urge to unzip his vest in favor of keeping her chest out of his view, her eyes drawn to the exposed patch of speckled skin on his upper body and to the zipper hanging teasingly below.

Thane followed her gaze and smirked, still resting comfortably between her thighs, holding his position upright with a hand; with his other, he gripped his zipper tightly and led it to descend in a way that was painfully slow to Shepard. He moved so slowly that she could hear the sound of the zipper sliding against each of the teeth individually, a noise that felt like it was echoing inside of her head; she was going crazy, _he_ was making her crazy.

She closed her eyes and arched towards him, sighing, "Now who's drawing this out?"

His only answer was a snort, an acknowledgement of Shepard successfully using his own words against him. He finished unzipping and slid effortlessly out of his vest, their clothes piling up in a mess going both directions, Shepard's behind her, Thane's behind him.

His biceps were sexy and black stripes lined his forearms; he was very well defined, black stripes marked along his ribs as well. There were areas along his torso that matched the color of his neck, sensitive places she wanted to exploit. His anatomy was obviously different, but it looked right to her.

She squeezed her thighs tightly around him, closing her eyes, and he rocked against her, making her moan. "What about your pants?"

"I don't wear anything underneath these, Siha."

This caused her eyes to pop back open; she really should have predicted that pants that tight didn't call for underwear. She saw uncertainty in his face for the first time and caught on to the fact that he really didn't want to go that far, at least not yet, and she didn't want to either.

Drell could relive memories in exact detail; she wanted their first time to be something that went on without a hitch, something that was _hot_, a memory not filled with the awkwardness of exploring new things. She wanted to grow closer to him and know him implicitly before they took that step. In the mean time, fooling around was a good way to accomplish that.

She smiled comfortingly up at him and nodded to let him know she understood, then moved her hands away from her breasts, allowing him to see everything. She felt apprehensive, a little self-conscious; she felt his eyes on her, drinking her in, and she was again crushed by the thought that nipples were really _weird_. The pressure was on.

"They're pink. That's…cute."

"What were you expecting?"

"The ones depicted in the diagrams were darker in color," he paused, eyebrow ridges pulling together in thought. "I was unaware such variety existed."

"Um, well…do you like them?"

"Siha, I've yet to discover something about you that I don't like."

He brought his hand back to her breast and touched it lightly, then squeezed. Curiosity was coming off of him in waves and he lowered his face to her chest, his dexterous tongue flicking out over one of the hardened buds of flesh. She arched into him, his name on her lips, and he nibbled, drawing out another whimper. He brushed his thumb over her other nipple as he worked both of him and she was impressed at how well he was doing, how amazing every single touch felt.

She let him continue to explore her as shudders wracked her body; he seemed fascinated by the reactions he could pull from her by toying with her chest. It was strange, the sensitivity in her breasts far greater than she'd remembered and he made her feel so _good_, turning her into a sweaty heap of gasps and moans. The rough texture of his skin left paths of red across hers, and she found that she liked it. It struck something animalistic within her, something _primal_; she liked having his mark on her.

She raked her hands across his back and squeezed his ass as he picked up where they had left off, his hips snapping and rolling into her; this time the feeling was more intense, her pleasure doubling because she could feel him more easily through the thin material of her panties.

Shepard grabbed the back of his head and kissed him hard, their mouths meeting forcefully; his tongue tickled at the tip of her lip before delving in and he explored her teeth, small, many and so different from his, before delving back out and lining her bottom lip. He flicked his tongue back inside and then removed it, repeating the motion, and when she realized how closely it hinted at intercourse she squeezed her thighs more tightly around him, growing impossibly more turned on than she had been.

Thane knew how to kiss, and it left her feeling funny, giddy, more than a little faint; her nerves were on fire and she could feel her heartbeat thudding in her veins. Her body ached with need and every time she heard him groan or cry out in pleasure, she felt her body respond by bringing her closer to her climax. She had never felt so turned on by a single sound.

One of her hands was on the back of his neck, clinging to him, the other arm placed behind her head and jerking limply with each timed thrust. She felt Thane's pace quickening against her; there was no doubt in her mind that he was almost there, his breath growing short and increasingly needier. The fact that he was getting something out of this, despite the thick leather he was wearing, made her stomach clench; she wanted more, but couldn't have it. Not yet.

Thane's gasps came out in short puffs on her neck, his body weight almost resting fully on top of her, and she felt him lift one of his arms up a little, surprising the commander by maintaining both his rhythm and balance. He took the hand she'd lain above her head in his and interlaced their fingers, her middle and ring digits spread open more widely by his fused ones.

It was a comfortable fit, and she felt a surge of emotion choke in her throat; no one had ever held her hand like that during sex, shown such _feeling_. His fingers tightened around hers and she responded in kind, the connection she felt to him because of this more than a little overpowering. It was intense and it made the pleasure building inside of her feel all that much better, because she knew it was building inside of him too.

Her stomach tightened and clenched; a few more needy thrusts and she was there, spots dancing before her eyes and disorienting her. She climaxed so hard she almost shouted and she briefly shifted in and out of consciousness; the vent went pitch black and she at first had the delirious thought that she had gone blind, that Thane had literally blown her mind. A few panicked seconds later she realized that her make shift light source had dropped.

He rocked against her one last time, moaning loudly, and collapsed on her, still holding her hand. He kissed her again, this one long and sweet; she had never felt more satisfied. For the first time, she had the passing thought that dying was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

As they lay together regaining their breath and calming their hearts, she decided she really didn't want to punch Mordin in the face. She wanted to _thank_ him.

Sound really carried in small, echo-y spaces. In the med lab, Mordin patted himself on the back for a job well done.


	2. Been Smoking Too Long

**A/N**: Jacob gets no love, so now he's my Shepard's bro. No worries, though; there's lots of Thane later on in the fic. There aren't enough stories that explore how Shepard feels about dying or how it's affected her, so I decided to try and give it a go. Read and review! :}

**Disclaimer**: Bioware is not mine. :{

_Click, click, click_.

Shepard's ears were rushing and the textured metal beneath her felt cold, freezing, _bitter_. It was almost a stabilizing force, a sharp counterpoint to the fire that had erupted in her body; just enough to keep her grounded, but not enough to prevent her from drifting. Her eyes were closed, but she wasn't asleep, and the scent of tobacco was ripe, cloying her taste buds as well as drying her throat. It was a feeling she realized she'd missed.

_Floating_.

That's what it felt like, or at least, that's what she thought floating might feel like, though she'd felt it before. She couldn't trust that feeling, that _memory_, though. Shepard _wouldn't_ trust it. She felt spacey, thoughts abuzz, muscles flexing and relaxing at random. Her mind tingled with nostalgia, alive, pictures and words popping in and dying off; each one made her tense and question, an uncomfortable air of uncertainty cocooning around her. Were these memories still hers? Or had they never been hers?

_"Come on, take one." _

_A darkly tanned hand pressed against hers, dropping a small, cylindrical stick onto her pink hued palm. The boy's dirty face was round with youth, honey eyes both earnest and insistent, and a tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth to moisten chapped lips. The girl licked her own in response, finding that the action was as contagious as a yawn._

_ "But, your dad said—"_

_ "Just take the fucking cigarette, Scar. Please."_

_ Scarlett kept walking, feet trudging through snow that made her boots soaked to her socks. She rolled the cigarette between two fingers guiltily, a sense of fear as well as utter sadness clenching in her gut._

_ "I didn't mean to bring him up, I—"_

_ "Scarlett," the boy stopped walking and the girl did as well, facing him with a cold-reddened hand pulled to her chest and wrapped around the soft, white stick, its presence there menacing. He reached out and tucked a red strand of painfully box dyed hair behind her ear, the action futile as it was once again displaced by the chilly winter wind. "I don't give a damn anymore. You shouldn't either."_

_ Without another word, the girl pressed the cigarette between ruby red lips, cheeks hollowing, her middle and index fingers stiff in an attempt to replicate a pose she'd seen in vids._

_ "You're doing it wrong," the boy laughed and plucked it from her mouth, flipping it so that she had the right end, then held the lighter for her. His hand was a reassuring weight on her shoulder. "Like that. Now, when I spark it, you're gonna breathe in. Got it?"_

_ She nodded delicately, a fast learner, and when fire lit, she took a quick puff. It was perhaps a little bigger than she'd intended, but she held it all in anyway, lungs igniting, never one to do things halfway; her eyes widened and when she couldn't take it anymore, she let out smoke with a great cough, chest heaving in a startled effort to rid herself of the sudden onslaught of toxins. She felt like she was going to puke, she was going to—_

"Is there a reason you're here, Commander?"

Smoke burned in her lungs and poured from her mouth in steady puffs, the cigarette she had lit moments ago already burnt down to the filter. She held in her last hit, eyes watering with the effort it took before slowly releasing it, a wave of coughs wracking through her body and shaking her. This was her third one in ten minutes. Shepard looked over at Jacob, his back turned to her, and flicked the remainder of the cigarette in his direction, one last cough erupting from pouty pink lips before finally acknowledging him.

"Just wanted to talk, Mr. Taylor. Do you have a problem with talking?"

The incessant clicking at his access terminal ended abruptly and the man turned around to face her, steps landing heavily on the floor's tinny surface. Shepard sparked her lighter intermittently, the jittery nicotine high working its way through her body; from her position, the man appeared upside down, the absurdity of it almost making her laugh.

He stopped in front of her, arms crossing, suddenly appearing upright once again. "No, Commander. But I do have a problem with you chain smoking on my gun table."

Shepard shrugged, the metal beneath her shoulders chilly and sticking slightly to her clammy, pale skin. Her legs were spread out before her, bent at the knee, and a hand cushioned the back of her head against the table. The other worked at the lighter, forearm flexing against her stomach, and she bit her lip in thought.

"You know I got a real craving for a burger the other day, Jacob? _A burger_."

"Swell, Commander. What's this got to do with me?"

"When I was on Omega, I got a big fucking varren burger. I'd never tasted anything so good in my _life_." Shepard gestured animatedly, ignoring that Jacob had even spoken.

"That's cool, Commander. Still not seeing your point."

"I'm a vegetarian." Shepard sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the table, a pattern etched into the revealed portions of her back mirroring the surface top, rolling her shoulders and popping her neck. "Was. Am. Was. I don't fucking know anymore."

Jacob frowned, turning to lean against the side of the table. She looked over at him as if he had an answer, eyebrows furrowed in attribution to her confusion. Shepard's shoulders were slumped, change weighing heavily on her small frame though she often refused to show it. She picked at the bed of a fingernail, the silence an unwelcome presence as she awaited a response.

"Why you telling me this, Commander?"

Shepard ran a hand through chin length, shaggy hair, a sigh drawing out in impatience. "Who else am I supposed to tell? You got any recommendations?"

"Kelly." _Obviously._

She rolled her eyes, feet now kicking obnoxiously, her heels biting sharply into the table leg. "She's weird. And I think she has scale itch."

"She's a professional."

"I don't need a professional."

"What do you need, Commander? Because what I'm seeing isn't making any sense." Jacob made no attempt at hiding his growing annoyance.

Shepard scooted back on the table, pulling her legs onto it and sitting Indian-style, once again slouching. She didn't know. She just knew she didn't feel right, she didn't feel like _herself_. Little things were different, things that bothered her; it was a shame she knew herself so well, because they were slight changes seemingly imperceptible to other people. Well, except for maybe Kaidan. He'd made it abundantly clear that he didn't think she was herself.

She looked down and traced circles into the surface top, bangs falling into her eyes and tickling her lashes. "I'm not really sure."

"You should go talk to the turian. You two seem pretty close."

Shepard snorted and blew air from her mouth up towards the ceiling, causing her bangs to puff out around her face, and contemplated lighting another cigarette. "He's probably in the middle of some calibrations. Besides that, he respects me too damn much to see me like this. I would _never_."

"I respect you." His response was immediate, unwavering, and he was unafraid to look Shepard in the eye. He was a real kiss ass. He was also really getting on her nerves.

"Well, you see, Jacob," she looked at him sardonically, her mouth curling into a scowl, "Your respect isn't something I care to keep." Whether or not it was true, he'd been sassing her the entire time she'd just been trying to talk to him.

It could've been the way she'd paraded on in, helping herself to a smoke without offering an explanation, but she didn't bother to entertain his perspective. She just knew that his unwillingness to let her _speak_ was grating. He tensed, eyebrows rising, before he shook his head and walked back over to his terminal.

"Talk, then. Maybe I'll listen. Either way, you get it off your chest." He resumed typing before glancing at her from over his shoulder as if a thought had suddenly occurred to him, though he'd been thinking about it the entire time. "Tell me something, though. What's the deal with you smoking? The Alliance is pretty strict on that."

"I'm not Alliance anymore, _soldier_," she said pointedly, eyeballing his Cerberus uniform. "So fuck it."

"That doesn't really answer the question, Commander."

Shepard pulled out the carton of cigarettes from her pocket, dropping it repetitively onto the table, the steady thudding of plastic against steel the only sound within the room. She thought very seriously about drawing out another, remembering the feel of smoke clouding in her lungs and wanting to relive it, but resisted the want for a while longer.

She'd been thinking for a long time about how to describe what she was experiencing to someone, but now that she finally had another person's attention, she found that she didn't know what to say. Minutes ticked by before she found her beginning and Jacob acted as if she wasn't even there, back turned to her, continuing on with whatever task she'd previously interrupted with her presence. Shepard preferred it that way.

"You were there for the Lazarus Project the whole time, weren't you?"

"Yeah, Commander, but you already know Miranda headed the project. She's the best woman to ask about whatever's bothering you."

She frowned and resumed sparking the lighter, eating away at most of the fluid without really caring. "I don't trust her. She'll run crying to the _boss_, telling him I've cracked."

"So you trust me?"

"That is…that's beside the point, Jacob. You're not up the Illusive Man's ass, so I'm going to talk to you. Will you just listen?"

He shrugged his shoulders, fingers studiously clicking, and Shepard heaved an exaggerated sigh before spreading back out on the table, this time lying on her stomach. She rested her forehead on folded arms and welcomed the darkness that encompassed her vision before continuing, voice muffled but strong.

"I can remember how things feel…well, how they're supposed to feel, but when I experience them, it's not the same. It's like my perception is all fucked up from how it used to be; I can smell and hear and feel and taste and it's all different from how I remember, sometimes it's the total opposite.

My favorite food used to be avocado, but I had some the other day and it tasted so horrible it made me physically sick. I used to like vanilla scented stuff, but now all I like is this floral shit, the kinda stuff that used to make my nose burn. I used to hate coffee, the stench, the _taste_, but I smelled some the other day and now it's all I can think about. I really want a fucking cup of coffee."

She peaked over at Jacob, trying to gauge his reaction, but the man stood in the exact same position, steady and back straight. The silence was a little uncomfortable, at least for Shepard, and she could tell that he was trying his damndest to be an ass.

"Coffee's in the mess."

Shepard snorted, muttered a "fuck you," and after a long pause, decided to answer his question with the hopes that maybe he'd stop being so contrary; she buried her face back into the crook of her arm. Weighing her odds, she decided it wasn't likely.

"I tried smoking because I used to do it a lot as a kid. I just wanted to know how it felt, just to see. It's the only thing that still _feels_ the same way it used to, the taste of tobacco in my mouth…it's just, _good_. I've started doing it when I need to feel like I'm the same person I was before I died."

She pulled her face back out of the crook of her arm and rested her chin on it, eyes prickling in their sockets. "I remember how all of this shit should make me feel, but it doesn't evoke the same..._experience_," she grabbed at the air, trying to explain something that seemed inexplicable.

"How can I even be sure that this is me? Maybe it's my _memories_, maybe those are the things that got fucked up. Maybe these things are how they always were and it's just my mind that's all confused. My orgasm doesn't even feel the same, for fuck's sake."

"Maybe you should keep it less personal, Commander."

"Maybe you should grow up and stop acting like a prissy bitch. I can't express to you how I'm feeling through a censor, Jacob."

"Sounds like maybe you should talk to Jack." He'd said this with the barest hint of sarcasm, which was lost on Shepard.

"_Are you fucking crazy_? She'd just tell me to stop being such a pussy, and she hates herself too much for me to feel okay showing her we've got similarities."

There was a lull in conversation in which Shepard started clicking her nails against the metallic table top, hoping to get on his nerves the way his keyboard clicking was getting on hers. She watched him lazily out of the corner of her eye, and after a few particularly obnoxious mocking clicks, he stiffened.

"Go talk to your _assassin_, then."

_Well_, that was strangely acidic.

Shepard pursed her lips, ribs beginning to ache from how she'd been laying. _There it was_. The obvious reason he must have been so unwilling to speak with her as of late. It explained the dirty looks, too. Everything kind of clicked into place and she felt a headache developing rather quickly. She got off the table and walked until she was behind him, her hands on her hips and voice coming out caustically.

"Bitter, Mr. Taylor?"

"Hardly, Commander. I'm just busy."

How dodgy. If he could drop it, she would. "Were you even listening? This is a problem, I—"

"I don't really get it, Shepard. Why'd you lead me on?"

She sputtered for a second, confusion a blockage in her throat. "I _didn't_."

He faced her again, frowning, his body now a little too close to hers. She backed up in response.

"You _did_, Commander. All that, 'Oh, you're still so fit,' and 'I'm just interested in _talking_,' and 'Who cares if Cerberus is watching,' and what the hell is it with you _women_?" His voice imitated hers where necessary and Shepard couldn't help the laugh that bubbled upward. "Seriously, Shepard. I don't get it."

"There's not much to get, alright? You're cute and all, but I was just being friendly," Shepard shrugged her shoulders, eyebrows rising expressively, "It's not my fault you interpreted it as what you wanted to hear."

"That's pretty presumptuous, Commander."

"More like pretty _obvious_. You wouldn't be acting like such a dick if you didn't want it to be true," and after a few seconds of silence, she tacked on a small, "I'm sorry."

Jacob shifted on his feet and Shepard took out another cigarette, twirling it between her fingers to give her something to do, waiting impatiently for him to say something. His eyes were downcast, and if he felt in any way embarrassed or ashamed of himself, she couldn't tell. It didn't seem in him to feel either of those things, though, so she was going to assume that he wasn't.

"Let's just drop it." His voice was hard, guarded, and Shepard nodded her agreement.

"Can we be friends, though? I like you, Taylor." She put the cigarette in her mouth and lit it, getting in her last one before leaving.

"Sure, whatever. I'm down with that. I'm serious about the assassin, though. He seems like he probably knows that kinda shit."

"Noted," Shepard headed for the door, suddenly feeling a little fidgety. She'd known she'd eventually go to the drell for help, but that didn't make her feel any better about it; she didn't want to be obnoxious or needy or interrupt anything. She definitely wasn't going to mention the whole smoking business. "'Til next time, Mr. Taylor."

She shot-gunned the last of her cigarette, spots dancing before her eyes, and then flicked it, not caring where it landed as long as it didn't follow her out of there. Jacob just looked at her, unimpressed.

"Don't tell Thane I was smoking. Don't tell _anyone_," then, jokingly and with a smile, hands in her pockets, "And don't tell anyone we're _friends_, either. Or that I apologized to you."

He laughed, shaking his head, and turned back to whatever it was he was doing. "Later, Commander."

The door closed behind her with a hiss and she scratched the back of her neck, suddenly feeling like it was a mistake to be so open with anyone. Jacob probably thought she was crazy, and he was likely feeling even more sour now that she'd officially friend-zoned him. What a waste of time that had been. She stopped in front of the elevator and pressed the button spastically, wanting to kick the thing in for taking so long.

"If it helps, I don't think that will make the elevator arrive any faster, Commander."

Shepard grumbled and the door dinged open and she took the opportunity to disappear inside, not specifically acknowledging Kelly with a real response. She had a headache and she felt woozy. She really should have taken it easy on the cigarettes, and the feel of butterflies fluttering about in her tummy wasn't really remedying the situation. She really fucking hated elevators.

She stood outside of life support with her arms crossed, chewing on her bottom lip, bouncing on the balls of her feet with nervous energy. She was debating whether or not to go in, the problems weighing down on her shoulders more than probably beyond fixing, not to mention beyond even being able to be explained in a way that might make sense. Shepard was at a real loss.

On one hand, it was fairly likely that he wasn't busy, something she could conclude based on the green pad lit up and staring her in the face. On the other, she'd not really talked to him in a while, once again returning to her habit of avoiding him in order to prevent any potentially awkward situations from arising. They hadn't discussed…certain actions, and it wasn't exactly fair of her to come to him with a problem after basically ignoring him for the past week.

Shepard needed help, though. She felt like she was cracking, like she couldn't go it alone in silence for much longer. She was terrified, the vividness of memories long passed sneaking up at her when least expected, nightmares in the dead of the night occurring with increasing intensity; she needed someone. She hated feeling so helpless.

"Ah, Siha, did you need something?"

The commander startled at the rumble behind her, hand flying over her heart and her breath gasping, looking back at the drell with widened eyes; she tapped the pad and the door opened, and as she walked, her voice came out in exasperation. "_Shit_, Thane, you scared the hell out of me."

"My apologies. You'd been standing there for so long that I thought I should say something," he took his usual place at the desk facing the ship's core and Shepard followed suit, mildly mortified at having been caught staring blindly at a damn door. "You seem troubled."

"You could say that," she said as she glimpsed the mug he'd carried into the room with him, a rich aroma smacking her straight in the face. "Is that coffee?"

"Yes, would you like some?" Thane slid the cup towards her with the barest hint of a smile, translucent lids flicking vertically and with ease.

"Yeah, thanks. It smells so _good_, I've gotta know if I really like this shit." She raised the mug to her lips, sipping gently, mindful of the liquid's hotness. Steam wafted out and warmed her face, and when her tongue was met with the black coffee's bitter flavor, she practically convulsed. "Oh my _god_."

"It's odd you have never had something so human as coffee."

"Well, I mean, I _have_. Um…it's hard to explain," she laughed weakly and sat the cup down, rubbing her forehead as if strained. "It kind of involves what I wanted to talk to you about, actually," Shepard paused, glancing up to look him in the eye. "But first, I think I need to apologize. So…I'm sorry."

She rubbed the back of her neck, teeth worrying her lip. Damn, but she'd been doing a lot of apologizing lately.

"Whatever for, Siha?" His face showed nothing more than curiosity, clearly not understanding what she was talking about. She felt even more embarrassed.

"_Really_? I mean, I've been avoiding you again, and now it seems like I'm only here because I need something. I've been kind of rude…I…don't you think?"

He blinked at her, arms folded in front of him. This was so awkward.

Finally, "From what I've read of your species, I was under the impression that it is customary, particularly for human males though not unheard of in females, to become distant for a short time after having a sexual encounter with another. I was not concerned."

So she was acting like a dick guy after a one night stand and they hadn't even gone all the way. _She had issues_. Shepard rubbed her eyes and heaved an exasperated sigh, slouching in her seat. "No, Thane, my behavior's been…I've been unfair to you. I'm just, I'm not sure what to…do_._ Or think._"_

His brow lifted and he sat back in his chair. "About what, Shepard?"

That was a sure sign he'd just taken that the wrong way. "It's not about us, don't worry, it's _me_," she brushed hair out of her face, rubbing her forehead._ " _I don't_…feel right."_

Thane's expression remained unchanged, smooth. "Elaborate, Siha."

She sat for a second, and as she looked at him, his eyes warm and accepting, she felt miserable. Shepard knew that if she opened her mouth, she wouldn't stop. She was going to lay it all on him, unfair certainly to him, but also something she felt like was a betrayal to herself and to her status as a commander. She needed a cigarette. She wanted to drink.

She wasn't supposed to have _problems_, and if she did, she was supposed to deal with them _herself_. She sure as fuck wasn't supposed to be spilling them out to her crew. She popped her knuckles, a nervous tick, and Shepard knew she was going to lay herself bare. As she began to speak, her cheeks flushed in panicked frustration.

"I'm not me. Everything is just _different_, and I mean beyond the upgrades and obvious changes that were made. I…I woke up in a body that isn't mine, this isn't _me_," her hand was splayed out on her chest and she was almost frantic, breathing abnormally, but she carried on, wanting desperately for someone not herself to understand.

"The things I eat, they don't taste the same, the way things smell, the way color attracts my eyes…these _eyes_ in my head, they aren't even _mine_. I'm only _alive_ because Cerberus needs to use me. This body that you like, even this _person_, I don't even know if it's me, Thane. I can't even trust my own memories.

It's all fabricated, every part of me, strung together in a lab, made to look like who I used to be, made to talk the way I would have, but it's not…it's…"

She flinched at the feel of wetness dripping down her cheeks and when a roughened thumb rubbed gently underneath her lashes in order to prevent the tears that were beginning to rapidly collect in the corner of her eye from falling, she wanted to leave. Shepard jerked away from the table, her chair clattering behind her, and if Thane was startled, she didn't notice.

Shepard all but ran for the door; if she didn't get the hell out of there, she was going to have a panic attack. Her head was fogged and she felt like she was swimming, suddenly hot and sweating, feverish. She felt foolish for speaking of it, for not ignoring it like she did everything else; it all seemed so melodramatic, the bringing it up and then storming out, and she wished she'd never done it.

Hands were around her, petting at her hair, turning her around, pulling her into a warm chest; the dull scent of leather was obscenely comforting and when she tried to twist away the first time, lashing out almost violently, she rapidly found that she didn't want to. Shepard allowed Thane to comfort her, to hold her more tightly against him, and before long, her arms were clinging to his back and her eyes were squeezed tightly closed.

He whispered into her ear things she didn't understand but felt soothed by anyway, and she focused on syncing her rapid breathing with his heart's steady thudding beneath her.

A hushed voice, chest rumbling against her, "Would you like to take a seat?"

She nodded, angry at herself, and forcefully wiped tears from her eyes. She wanted to flee but was unable to go back to avoiding Thane as she had been. She was a _mess_.

He led her by the elbow to his cot, sitting her down and running a hand through her hair before taking a seat next to her. She pulled her legs onto the small bed and crossed them, resting her elbows on her thighs, and stayed silently with her face in her hands. Her entire frame shook.

"I don't cry. I don't know what this is, I don't _cr_—"

"Siha, stop." He uncovered her face and shifted bodily towards her, one leg curled underneath him and the other dangling off of the cot, foot resting on the floor. "You needn't feel shame in crying, in finding _release_."

She shivered as he cupped her cheeks, stroking underneath her eyes with his thumbs. "Yes, I _should_. I'm not this weak, sniveling fucking person, I'm _not_."

He continued stroking her cheeks, frowning, unmoving; the calm person he always was. He seemed to think quietly before addressing her. "Have you ever been caught in the pouring rain without cover and happened to get a droplet of water in your eye?"

"Yeah, I guess." She didn't have a clue where he was going with this.

"Our way of seeing is very different, Siha, but I'm certain you noticed that just before you blinked that droplet away, your vision was for a moment magnified." He paused, awaiting her confirmation and chasing away another tear with the brushing of his fingertips before continuing. "It is sometimes weeping that helps one to see things more clearly."

She shook her head, his hands pulling away from her face slightly, and she tried desperately to keep the tears from continuing. "Please, Thane_, stop_.I can't fall apart like this."

A moment lingered between them and neither dropped their eyes.

Her breathing was harsh and she felt a blockage in her throat; her nose burned, her eyes stung, and she was deeply and utterly confused. _"I'm so_ _scared_."

He grasped her shoulders, squeezing comfortingly, searching the depths of clear, blue eyes. "It will always be safe to mourn here, Siha. You needn't be afraid of letting go."

She couldn't handle being told that it was okay to cry; no one had ever let her, no one had ever told her that it was _okay_. Shepard's bottom lip quivered and her face crumpled, tears now streaming freely. She hadn't cried since she was thirteen, and she'd spent a lot of time afterwards telling herself that she never would again.

He pulled her to him and stroked her hair, Shepard burying her face deeply into his chest, and her first sob wracked through her body, gut wrenching and soul deep.

With her face hidden and her arms wrapped around him, she allowed her tears to escape freely. Staying in control, what had been easy for her before, became all but impossible with Thane offering her his shoulder to lean on. It was too much, just knowing that there was someone other than herself who both knew the weight she carried and _cared_ about it. All of the tight control she'd wrapped around herself, the _restraint_, was broken, and she let it all out.

"That's it, my siha." He kissed the crown of her head, rubbing her shaking back and embracing her impossibly tighter. "I will assist you in carrying your burdens for as long as I am able."

Shepard shuddered against him, sobbing audibly, and clenched her hands into fists around the leather of his jacket in order to prevent herself from popping apart at the seams; not many people had offered Shepard empathy in her lifetime and loneliness struck her, wrenching sobs from her with renewed vigor, her lungs beginning to ache from her desperate attempts at containing the wails.

Shepard had always been a silent crier, the type whose tears would fall but no sound would be elicited, but she was now outright _weeping_. She'd never cried like this, not even as a child, and it at first embarrassed her. She'd never heard such noises being torn from her, the sound of them both sad and pathetic, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't keep them from coming.

She was shocked at the mess she had become.

Thane sat with Shepard patiently, petting her, whispering, holding her; when she realized that she'd not been met with snide comments about what a blubbering idiot she was, she stopped caring, stopped struggling to keep it from happening. In the circle of Thane's arms, she felt at peace with herself falling apart. She wept for a long time, clinging to Thane like a lifeline, and she felt like she was never going to be able to stop.

Even after her tears eventually evaporated, she clung to him, unwilling to remove herself from his sheltering embrace, still one moment and shivering the next. She felt hollow, carved out and emptied, and her head pounded at the amount of tears she had shed. Shepard's entire face was flushed pink, her eyes rimmed red, but for once, she didn't _care_. Because he didn't care, either.

Their ears rang in the quiet aftermath.

"Are you better?"

"Yeah."

He continued to stroke her hair, fingers running through it, and he rubbed her back in gentle, circular movements. The silence stretched on before either of them spoke again.

"Thane?" She sniffled, her voice muffled.

"Yes, Siha?"

"I'm not really sure what to do after such a dramatic display of emotion."

He pulled her away gently, chuckling, and tilted her chin up; Shepard's eyes were immediately drawn to his, Thane's irises showing emerald green in the room's stark lighting.

"I would like to kiss you, Siha, but I'm afraid I'll frighten you away." He smiled, tone teasing, and she smirked in response.

"Kiss me."

"Do you promise you'll come back to me if I do?"

"_Always_."

Thane leaned down, his lips meeting hers in tender contact, and they kissed sweetly; neither of them deepened it, both wanting it to be lingering and chaste. Shepard pulled away slowly, eyes still closed, lips parted, and she felt remarkably better though her cheeks were still damp.

"Now, this problem you've spoken of…" He shifted, scooting up onto the cot and leaning against the wall. "You are feeling different in body?"

She licked her lips and pressed them together, looking down at her hands. "Yeah. A lot different. It's just, _everything_. Everything is all messed up from how I remember."

He nodded, appearing to consider what she'd said and maintaining eye contact, watching the way she anxiously brushed the palm of her hand against her sweat-dampened forehead.

"It is understandable that you're so upset at not being able to experience the same…sensations. I imagine it must be quite jarring." He paused, reaching out to stroke her fingers. "However, I am puzzled as to why you feel that you are not the same individual as you were before."

"I've told you, Thane, everything just feels fucking _weird_." She shifted her weight on the firm cot, enjoying the way Thane was playing with her middle and ring fingers as if amazed that the two weren't fused as his were. Her voice softened, still altered from her sobbing, and she briefly bit her lower lip, cheeks heating. "Like the other night, um…I've never felt anything like that before. It was like I was a fucking virgin or something."

"Surely you flatter me, Siha."

She ducked her head and laughed openly, cheeks dimpling. "Yeah, maybe that part's a coincidence and you're just that good."

He smiled at her and leaned forward to kiss her dampened cheek, nuzzling her affectionately. "Enough. Perhaps you can give me a little more detail on your predicament. How long have you been feeling like this?"

"Since I 'woke up.' I mean, it's obvious they weren't able to recreate my body in exactly the same way it had been. It's weird to be able to look at your own hands and realize your fingers aren't as long as they used to be. Jacob told me I was basically a pile of congealed scraps when they found me."

Thane's grasp tightened around her fingers and she looked back up at him. His brow was furrowed, and he met her gaze with an intensity she'd never be able to muster. She smiled. "Finally someone who feels as uncomfortable about that as I do."

"Continue, Siha." His voice betrayed no emotion.

"Okay," she nodded. "So I realize that this body is different, but I don't understand how this can be the same person inside with that being the case."

"Explain to me why."

"Because no matter how hard I try, I can't make _this_ self go back to being how I was before. I can't make this self not like meat or the color pink or _lavender_, of all things. I can remember the delicious taste of avocado on my tongue, but these taste buds, they _reject_ that memory. How can I be the same? I'm not."

"I see. So you subscribe to the idea that it is the way you sense things that cultivates who you are?"

She scratched her head, mouth scrunching as she bit the inside of her cheek as well. It sounded strange when he put it that way. "Well, let's say I go on a date with a guy I've only just met. In order to get to know me, he's most likely going to ask me about my favorite things and interests." She shrugged, lips pursing together in thought. "If I had gone on a date with said guy two years ago and then done so again in the present, he would think those dates had been with two different people. I'm different. This just, it isn't _me _and it disturbs me. I don't know how else to say it."

"That example is immaterial, Siha. I wouldn't be able to decipher your personality through the trading of a few inane facts about your preferences. It is the equivalent of saying that if you and I were to have the same favorite color, we'd be the same people. How you perceive outside stimuli has everything to do with the body and nothing to do with the soul. The soul is what makes you who you are."

Shepard felt…stupid, suddenly. She was placated by that answer, almost awed, but needed more, mostly playing devil's advocate in order to assuage the pessimist in her. "It still changes you. You make decisions based on how you perceive the world."

"Simple ones, Siha. It is the difference between choosing lavender over vanilla because you believe one smells nicer than the other and deciding whether to protect an innocent or to murder them. One is a determination of the body and the other is of the soul." He paused, seeming to switch points. "Do you believe that I stopped being who I am when I opted to have surgery to alter the way I perceive Hanar speech patterns?"

Her eyebrows furrowed and she licked her lips, clasping her hand around his. She ignored the first part because she didn't know what to say, but she was very deeply mollified by it. "No, but that's not the same thing. You're just seeing extra things, not completely changing how you feel about stuff you could already see."

"I'm incapable of seeing dark reds now, Siha. I promise you my soul is the same."

"I fully trust that. I think what I'm trying to say is that I'm not just worried about feeling things differently…it just, it makes me wonder what else has been changed about me. It makes me worry that maybe some things were done intentionally, that Cerberus purposefully tweaked me so I'd act the way they want me to."

She looked back down at her hands, now wringing them rather than entwining them with his, feeling frustrated at being incapable of possessing Thane's eloquence. "If they could bring me back to life, who says they couldn't have tampered with my soul?"

"Cerberus may have been able to recreate your body, Siha, but they would be wholly incapable of fabricating your soul. You are just as you were, put into another body in order to sustain your ties to this galaxy."

Shepard conceded, once again pacified by his use of reason; that didn't stop her from needing him to resolve her other worries. "Miranda once mentioned that if she'd been in full control of the Lazarus Project, she'd have ensured that there'd been some type of control chip implanted inside of me, but the Illusive Man prevented it from happening. I…sometimes I wonder if I fully believe that."

"Because," she heaved a sigh and Thane passively listened, seeming to take in everything she said like a dried sponge to water. "I ran into one of my former crewmates during our first real confrontation with the Collectors. Um…remind me to tell you about him later. Anyway, he _assured_ me that the old me would never work for Cerberus and that I was a traitor for defecting from the Alliance.

I took out an assload of Cerberus operatives before I died and I fully loathe the organization, so it makes me question why I'm doing this rather than branching out independently. I don't fucking question myself about this shit, Thane. I never have, but now, here I am, sitting here doubting myself as a commander. It's not like I don't have my own reasons, because I _do_, it just makes me wonder about the validity behind them."

She shivered, a chill permeating through her, before continuing on with her point. "When I think control chip, I think something obtrusive, like an electric device that administers shocks when I do shit they don't want me to do or something equally as irritating and/or debilitating. What if it's something more subtle, though, and it's slowly whittling away at my resolve without my knowing it?"

This next silence was heavy, a deadweight on the both of them, and Shepard rested her arms on her knees. Thane reached out to touch her, his hand settling against the back of her neck, and the commander closed her suddenly heavy lids.

"Only time will tell, Siha. And for that, I am here."

"I…" She was overwhelmed, her sense of relief as crushing as it was crippling. He didn't have a real answer for it, not this time, but the fact that he offered to stay with her despite the fact that she could be totally fucked moved her. "Thank you, Thane."

"Siha, you needn't thank me. But you're welcome."

Shepard shouldn't have been comforted by that, but she was. And he was right. Time would tell. She crawled the small distance between them on the sturdy cot and pushed at him until he was lying flat so that she could curl up on top of him. She buried her face in the crook of his neck and inhaled deeply as his arms wrapped around her.

"I'm sorry I've been afraid of you. Of us."

"There are many things to fear, Siha." Thane stroked her cheek and then inclined his head. "Being loved is not one of them. Allow me to _love_ you."

Shepard almost got up and left, but thought better of it. It was too much, the amount he was offering her; she couldn't deal with it. Kaidan had provided something she could feel was casual, he'd made it easier for denial, for her to believe that it wasn't a solid relationship. She couldn't love again, had made it a point to tell Thane in the beginning that it _wasn't_ love, and it was slow to settle in that he wasn't asking for _her_ to love him; he just wanted to love her, even if she couldn't return the feeling.

Shepard placed her forehead against Thane's and closed her eyes, absently sliding her fingertips along the sensitive skin of his cheek. He dragged a finger up her spine and she arched, then cuddled more deeply into him, feeling warmed and wanted.

"Okay, Thane. I'm done running."

She would never tell him the truth of it, of what she'd realized it actually was. Shepard would never tell him that her bouts of distances with him were because she was terrified of loving a dying man. He was wrong, because _loving_, that was something to fear.

But Shepard had learned not to be afraid of anything.


	3. Lapsing the Loop

**A/N:** So this update took a lot longer than I initially thought it would. I am sorry! But I have a game plan now, and I know where everything is going. Thank you so much for reading! :)

**Disclaimer: All of this is Bioware's.**

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_Sand—it always came back to sand. The shit was gritty—she could feel it beneath her nails just as surely as it crept into her bikini—and it was omnipresent._

_ Consistent. The sand, it was _consistent_._

_ She could taste it in her mouth—smooth and liquid, _sticky _like quicksand. And it moved. It kissed her, these particles of worn sediment, of _dirt_, like she'd never been kissed before._

_She decided that this must be what love felt like. This sand, it loved her like nothing had ever loved her; her body was ablaze, _alive_. She felt _good_. There was a pattern to the way it worked her, to the way it made her flesh burn, to the way it made her _sting_. It hurt. It hurt her so much. _

_She could remember something—a woman. The memory was slow to materialize, something her human mind had trouble recalling. Remembering was _always_ so slow._

_The sand felt like flesh, like the prodding of fingertips—it was as alive as it made her feel, awakening parts of her body that were proven better lain dormant. She could hear it now, the panting that must have always been there—it was a sound with depth, full, lingering—and there was a heartbeat._

_The sand, it had a name. _

_There was a shuddering body on top of her and she felt outside of herself. She had memory of this person, of the way they were making her feel, and she felt good. _

_She was complete._

_There were lips, wet with bubblegum gloss, _chapped_, and they slid against hers in a painful kind of desperation. This wasn't sand in her mouth, not as she had once thought, but the tongue of someone familiar. _

_The sand, its name was Sophia. _

_Brown hair and wide eyes, a hard gait, a foul mouth._

_Sophia._

_She touched the woman, her partner, as their kiss broke. There were words on Sophia's lips, but she could only see the movement; there was no longer any sound. The heaving chest her palms had swept against felt viscous and slick somehow, suddenly _sticky_—and then there was noise. She knew then that she had heard the shot moments after it had fired._

_She could _taste_ it. _

_She could taste the iron, the tinny flavor of it; she could taste the blood. It was everywhere, she could smell it in her nose, _feel_ it in her nose—it was pouring, dripping down the back of her throat—she couldn't _breathe_, and around her, there was only panic._

_There was a gun in her hands, even though it wasn't supposed to be; the weight of it was heavy. The want to drop it and run was heavier. _

_Though the moans of terror around her were familiar, a thing she had long since grown used to, it disoriented her; she was dizzy, hot—she could feel sweat dripping down the back of her neck, the stuff pooling to trickle down her spine, more strongly than she could even see._

_She realized very late that it was because she was squinting._

_There was brightness—_everything_ was bright. Her lip trembled. She could not recall her training, she could not regain control over herself, she could not _focus_. Sand tore at wet feet and she was trudging, but could not see enough to know where she was going._

_She would die here._

_She could feel pain in her knees. They ached and throbbed and distantly she realized that it was because she was squatting. Still there was noise—more noise than before. Everything was running—even the trees, she felt, were leaving her—but she was still; she was in the forefront._

_They needed her._

_Suddenly she was knocked flat and there was grit against her back—that sand again. She couldn't move. Her chest felt impossibly tight and she was squirming—she reached out with her hands, her eyes still blinded; someone was stepping on her, _pinning_ her._

_She could recall that face, but not the boot._

_This wasn't right; this was not how it had _happened_. _

_There was a pain in the center of her forehead where something cylindrical was pressing against it and suddenly, she couldn't feel—she was no longer breathing, no longer thinking, no longer _being_, and around her, there was only the strangest shade of black._

_The sky was black here. She lay stretched out on her back in the grass and peered up at it, the huge expanse of nothingness a _mystery_ to her. It was beautiful, in a constant state of movement—it shimmered and shifted. She longed to touch it. She reached out, her fingers spread wide—silk. That's what she imagined it was like; it was so _pleasant_. She heard a sound from beside her and it echoed in her ears. A chuckle._

_She remembered this man; she could recall the honey brown of his eyes and the gruffness of his voice. He was more distant than the woman from before. He had leaned into her, his arm wrapping around her waist, and her sinuses began to prickle. Her eyes were watering, and in this place, she found that she was blinded for an entirely different reason._

_She had known him since she was young._

"_You will touch the sky someday," he whispered in her ear._

_It was a silly thing to say, because she knew that she would. She would do anything to touch that sky. She _had_ done everything._

_He crawled on top of her, temporarily obstructing her view, and she couldn't help but fight the frustrated noise that tore through her throat. This man's kiss was not like the sand; the burning he made her feel was more like fire. He blazed against her, searing, hotter than anything she had ever imagined, and she was engulfed. She buried her nails in his back, her breathing a sigh, and she struggled to catch any patch of black that she could from over his shoulder._

_She went through the motions, but she would rather look at the sky._

_She could hear a strange sound. It was abrupt and it tittered, the noise becoming sharper the longer she listened, the sky growing darker the longer she looked. She knew then that it would swallow them. That sky, it was not a thing of niceness. _

_That sky was _alive_._

_Mechanical—that's what it was. The sky was not of silk, because there were only machines. _Everything_ was on fire now and smoke built up in her lungs, the pain of it _crushing_, and around her—_

Around her, there was only a dull beat, persistent and reliable in its rhythmic urgency. The steady pulse throbbed in her ears and pounded against her cheeks, chasing away all of the noise that normally preoccupied her.

The _quiet_, it was curious.

Stillness, tranquility—these were two adjectives that she had never expected to be applicable to her state of being. She seemed to have found these things, however; they no longer eluded her. There was an innocuous emptiness about her, an emptiness that was devoid of the normal frenzy of life, without all of the noise, and even lacking in the nightmares that had so unfailingly crept up on her.

She had found peace here, and it seemed to be immediately beneath her.

Shepard knew that the warmth here was not given to her by sand or fire. She could hear a beating, but the origin of the sound was not from a gunshot. She could feel the presence of something pressed to the middle of her forehead, but it was not painful, nor was it threatening. Her vision was not encumbered by irises of honey brown though she was surrounded by that pool of silky black; it did not skitter—it was static, its attendance reassuring rather than ominous.

What the commander could feel the most was the ardent hammering below her, and it lulled her more deeply into a restful sleep.

This sleep was interrupted when she felt fingers drag through her hair; they massaged at her scalp for a moment before they once again pulled through strands of blonde, the presence of the offending digits both yielding and pleasant. At the same time, she felt silk-soft lips at her ear; Shepard could sense them moving, but was still far too sleep-drunk to understand the words they were forming around.

She didn't want to open her eyes. The commander was worn out, _tired_; those few moments she'd been resting had been the best she'd experienced since she'd died, and it was something she very much wanted to recapture.

Those lips, though, they were _relentless_; there was something they must have needed to say, something they must have needed for her to hear, because they wouldn't stop, no matter how strongly Shepard strained to ignore them. The farther she was pulled from rest, the less faint the whispering became, until finally all that the commander could hear was—

"Siha, the time is late…perhaps you should retire to your quarters?"

And somehow, in that perfect silence she had found, she realized that this particular sound had been sorely lacking.

"Mmm, I don't wanna move." Her answer was met with a rumbling chuckle and more finger strokes weaving through her hair, which made her want to move even less.

Shepard constantly found herself surprised by the tender soul beneath her. The drell was so warm for an assassin, for someone so resembling a _reptile_—she knew that her presence was distracting him from sleep, but the drell was too much of a gentleman to ever admit to it; he would allow her to stay as long as she needed or wanted to.

The welcome was nice, and more and more, she found herself taking advantage of his kindness, her previous flightiness seeming to have dispersed.

The commander had held true to the promise she had made him days ago; she was no longer afraid to be _near_ and in the last week she'd found herself seeking out the drell's company. There was a want, a _need_ to be around him now, and the fact that she had developed a certain attachment to him was not as off-putting as she'd initially thought it might be; the feeling of having someone there when they were needed the most was an interesting one, and she found that it made her…happy.

Another thing that made her happy was the thundering that had persisted despite her wakefulness. She had been quick to make the connection—the thrumming rhythm from her otherwise dreamless sleep had been Thane's heartbeat at her ear.

She could feel the subtle, recurring thump; the sound was as powerful as it was comforting and she decided that she never wanted to stop listening. She could feel the warmth of scales against her cheek and she smiled at the thought that their unique pattern was likely raising identical indentations on her skin.

Silence once again settled over them, Thane seeming, for the moment, to drop the idea of the commander turning in for the night. The feeling of fingers worming through her hair soon resumed and she inhaled; the dull scent of leather she was met with had quickly become a normalcy to her, _routine_.

"How'd you get so good at that, anyway?"

The drell cleared his throat, his hand stilling in its movement. "To what are you referring?"

"Playing with my hair. Feels nice…"

"Your hair feels nice as well. It is…_bizarre_…" His fingers still clutched at blonde tresses and Shepard shifted on top of him; she wanted to see that expression he got on his face when he was thinking deeply about something that was so _simplistic_ to her. She didn't get to see it often.

His brow was pinched, his eyes bright, and his bottom lip pouted to a degree that was almost imperceptible. She noticed it, though, and she couldn't get over how _exposed _the expression made him look.

"A good bizarre?" Shepard licked her lips, her voice a husky whisper.

"It is…pleasant. I've never felt anything like it." Thane's arm tensed beneath her and the drell shifted, the hand trapped under her stomach curling and flexing. She trailed a finger over his brow and sat up in response, a question on her lips.

"Your arm go numb?"

"Around an hour ago, Siha."

Shepard pulled back to look at him more thoroughly, her hands braced against his chest, and her knee slipped from the bedding. As she moved in order to reorient herself, her elbows dug into his ribcage and a puffing breath escaped through Thane's parted lips. She slid her thigh into a position that pressed more tightly against his hip and the drell rested large hands on the small of her waist, the new positioning growing less awkward as time passed.

His cot was tiny.

They lay stomach to stomach, the commander nearly entirely on top of the assassin so that they could both fit comfortably within the small space. They frequently had this problem, arms and limbs poking in various places, body parts going numb or slipping off of the bedding entirely—there wasn't much room to _move_, but really, Shepard considered the perceived inconvenience to be more of a convenient excuse to be closer to him.

"Sorry." Her thighs tightened around his hips as she took his hand in hers and her expression turned bashful, her cheeks possessing a rosy tinted flush that had not been present seconds before.

"There is nothing to apologize for."

As she readied to speak again, she rubbed at the firm muscles in his forearm in an effort to force them awake. "I'm…I really should go, shouldn't I? You're probably really tired and…" the commander trailed, her voice acquiring something of a wavering quality as she continued to massage away at skin that was surely tingling.

She didn't want to leave; she was dragging this out, making him feel guilty. She was a bad person, because she knew _exactly_ what she was doing.

Thane made a low sound in the back of his throat in appreciation and Shepard continued her kneading, encouraged. "No—don't allow me to force you out. Whether or not you leave is something that is wholly dependent upon your wishes."

She knew he was exhausted, she knew what he more than probably _wanted_, but she was selfish, and as she stared at the man beneath her, she also knew that he wouldn't deny her. Politeness was a thing she needed to brush up on—in her personal life, at least. "Can we talk a little first, then? I don't really want to leave yet."

"Stay, then." He pulled away from her and returned his newly freed hand to her waist, the room quiet for a moment as neither of them spoke. Thane stared up at her, a soft smile gracing his features, his posture one of expectance—but also of patience. "Is there something on your mind?"

"Well," she shifted once more, the subject making her uncomfortable even more so than her position on top of him. "That's kind of the reason I don't want to leave."

"Oh?" He swept hair from her face and cupped her cheeks and the commander couldn't help the subdued smile that dimpled across her softened features.

She hated talking about this shit, but Thane made it _easy_.

"You're kind of amazing, you know that?"

"It would seem, Siha, that elaboration is not something that's present amongst your copious talents."

Her cheeks dimpled even further and she tweaked the tip of his nose, his breath heating the palm of her hand. "I like to keep you guessing, button eyes."

"Ah, an apparent form of revenge."

Shepard traced her index finger up the bridge of his nose and continued to tickle upward, the digit dipping to trace the pentagon shaped scale accenting the middle of his forehead. His fingers flexed at her sides and she bowed over to peck a kiss to his lips, the touch both sweet and brief. "Exactly. You have way too much fun teasing me." She nuzzled the maroon hued ribbing along his jaw with her nose, her eyes bright. "Because you are a _bully_."

"Slanderous accusations."

Shepard put her hand over her heart, her head cocking to the side. "I speak only the truth." She bit her bottom lip, her eyes seeking out his larger ones. "And the truth is, you help me feel normal when I sleep. I have chronic nightmares and you kind of make them stop."

"How long have these nightmares been occurring?" His brow was furrowed, his expression one of curiosity.

"Off and on since I fried my brain on one of those fucking Prothean beacons." She rubbed the back of a fingernail against the leather one of her hands was resting on and continued to chew on her bottom lip, thinking a little more about the mess her sleep cycle was like before continuing. "They're never exactly the same, but the theme is uh…pretty obvious."

"I've read reports about Eden Prime, _heard_ things. Your interaction with the Prothean beacon, it still troubles you?"

"It's not really that. I…well, okay, it bothered me at first, but I'm kind of over it. Desensitized, maybe? I've dealt with it. I think that shit is just what initialized everything." Shepard settled back into a more relaxed position on top of the drell, Thane's hands sweeping over to massage at the back of her neck. "They even stopped for a while. We had this asari—oh, that feels good— onboard who used to help me sort this shit all out. You met her briefly on your first mission with me when we were looking for Samara, actually…"

"Ah, Liara?" He asked it as a question though she knew he was already aware of his correctness and it made her smile again; she was sure he did it for her convenience.

"That's the one. Anyway, something got shaken loose again. I keep having them, like the same thing on a fucking loop, except the next dream is even more of an acid trip than the last. They're so out of the ordinary lately."

"In what way?"

"They're _personal_. Before, it was all faces I couldn't recognize—hell, entire _species_ I couldn't recognize, but now it's like…fuck, it's disturbing. People I knew. People I loved. Situations I've been in. All of it gets tweaked in some way and it's _miserable_. Honestly, Thane, I think it's just me being scared of the boogeyman. I think I keep seeing people being harvested by reapers and it's…" she trailed, finally losing the drive to speak further.

Shepard could tell by the expression on the assassin's face that he was thinking very deeply about something. He ran his hands down the length of her back in a comforting gesture and she shivered, and by the time he spoke again, she felt collected.

"That is…unsettling, simply for me to contemplate." His hand rubbed a circle against the small of her back and she heaved a sigh as he continued. "I do not envy the weight you bear, Siha, and that you are able to carry these horrors with such ferocity humbles me."

Shepard straightened up and searched his eyes; even in the dim lighting, she could see herself reflected in them. They were so strange, the dazzling black pools so different from hers, but they were the most expressive she had ever seen. He spoke with so much meaning that it caught her off guard; words had never meant much to her, but she found that _his_ made her heart thrum.

She didn't know what to say.

Subject change.

She needed a subject change.

"You know what I find unsettling?" She trailed her thumbs along the underside of his lower eyelids before she brought her forehead to rest against his.

"What, Siha?"

Their faces were so close together that her vision doubled, so she closed her eyes; she could feel hot breath puffing against her lips and her stomach tightened. "How fucking cute you are."

"Siha, you are—" He resituated beneath her and their foreheads pressed more tightly together for a moment.

Shepard trailed her fingertips down the side of his face and over his jaw line, the path they were mapping stopping to tickle along his collarbone; his jewelry was a cool presence against her knuckles, one that only served to stir the beating of her heart. "What am I?"

"_Uncouth_."

She paused a second before laughing, her fingers tinkering now with his leather collar. She loved the way it felt. "You know it makes you hot."

The way Thane chuckled caused his chin to tilt upward, their foreheads no longer touching, but their lips meeting; the movement was not purposeful, the action not even a kiss, but his lips felt soft when they brushed over hers, _full_, and she pressed against him, goading the touch into something deeper.

What happened by accident turned into a series of chaste kisses and Shepard's head was buzzing so loudly that she was hardly aware of the smacking noises filling the room. He was so gentle and soft with her that her head spun and all she could think about was getting into his pants. It wasn't enough for her—this innocent, circling around the shit she knew the two of them really wanted to do, it needed to _stop_. They'd probably moved a little too fast before, but now things were moving far too _slowly_.

If she weren't so busy kissing him, she would have snorted, because she was really fucking kidding herself. Things were laggard…_stagnant_, even. And it was her fault, really—she had to go and fuck everything up by bitching about her _problems_. She had a sexy green alien_ right underneath her_, and all she could do was _whine_.

What the fuck was her problem?

_No more_.

She was going to man up, because what they needed was to find the pace that was _just right_, and she had an inkling that she had to be the one to set it.

Shepard ran her tongue along the line of Thane's bottom lip in a way that was as playful as it was demanding; the need to feel him in her mouth was pressing, something she couldn't ignore, something she _needed_. Thane's lips parted for her and he took on a more submissive role, his passiveness something that allowed the commander to explore his mouth more thoroughly.

She teased her tongue against the drell's and his flicked back with just as much fervor. He felt like silk, so smooth and yielding that she almost forgot that she was kissing another species entirely; in the few times she'd kissed him like this, she hadn't been able to stop herself from thinking about how different his tongue felt than she had imagined it would. It felt like the soft, pink tongue of humans she'd dated, but bumpier somehow, and it'd proven to be far more flexible than her own.

As she investigated the width of his teeth, she began to feel a peculiar, prickly sensation that seemed to work its way through her tongue and spread out over her lips. They felt…chapped, _raw_. It was like literal fucking chemistry, like when they kissed, it _sparked_, and the feeling was beginning to erupt in her _nose_, and it was like…

Cinnamon.

She felt like she'd just inhaled a palm full of cinnamon, both through her mouth and nostrils; it felt as weird as it did _good_ and so she kept going, her tongue probing and poking about even as the crippling need to sneeze ceased upon her. She fought to bottle it, a battle she thankfully had thus far managed to succeed at.

She felt electric.

Nothing turned her on quite like making out did, but the way he made her feel was _ridiculous_. Kissing him made her skin feel so sensitive that she could feel _everything_ more clearly. She felt kind of like a deaf person turned on to sound for the very first time, because all of the muted sensations she was suddenly experiencing were _loud_.

She could feel her eyelashes touching the tops of her cheeks, _tickling_, and she fought the urge to stop kissing the drell so that she could fully concentrate on ripping them out. Thane's hand flexed and tightened against her hip and she could feel it with her whole body, his scales grazing against the softness of her skin in a way that was _perfect_.

The little hairs all over her skin were standing on end and she'd erupted into goose bumps, which made her shiver and fidget around on Thane's lap. Shepard was so aware of every part of her body that she could feel her hardened nipples brushing against the inside of her bra and she just wanted to _melt_.

Why did she feel so _turned on_?

She was so horny all she wanted to do was rip the drell's clothes off and have her way with him. _God_, everything felt good. It felt _too_ good. She just wanted to do him and get it over with, so that they could do it over and over, anytime they wanted, without it being such a big deal; she just wanted him inside of her so bad she could _scream_.

Thane wiggled underneath her and random spatters of color sparked before her closed eyes—he was _hard. _He was hard from a _kiss_. His hands had worked their way under her shirt and they were smoothing over her hypersensitive flesh, the feel of it driving her mad; her tank top was hitching its way upward and she could feel the warmth of worn leather beneath her. She wanted him _so bad_.

Hair tickled at the back of her neck and it jolted a spark of sensation down her spine; her hips jerked in response and Thane's erection rubbed against her crotch, the suddenness of it causing her to moan a mewling sob into his mouth. Their kiss broke as he gripped her hips more harshly and rocked into her again, and this time, they both groaned in unison.

Just…right…

Shepard felt normally deft fingers fumbling at the waist band of her pants and she startled. He wanted this as much as she did. She grasped his hands and pushed them away firmly and he turned the denial into a hand-hold by linking their fingers, a question lighting his button-like eyes.

"I should," she gasped, her cheeks flushed and her breathing heavy. "I should go." _God_, there was so much more she wanted to do.

She cleared her throat as she climbed off of him, her arms slipping and sliding in the sheets to make her departure as awkward as possible. Thane grabbed an elbow and sat up to assist her, the drell still silent, but curious.

It was normally a relief for her to feel her feet on the ground, but she felt a little like she was sinking into it. She felt…murky. She cleared her throat again and smoothed out her clothing, and the way her own hands felt as they rubbed against herself made her want to cry because of how good it was.

She felt…_peculiar_.

She put one foot in front of the other to test her weight on the floor's new found _puttiness. _"Well, I—"

"Wait," Thane's fingers wrapped around her wrist and he tugged in order to prevent her from moving. "How do you feel about music?"

"Uh, I mean…I like it, why?" The question caught her off guard and her heated frame of mind could hardly process it. It was kind of…random.

He pulled up his omni-tool instead of answering, an orange glow filling the room, and Shepard pursed her lips while bouncing on the balls of her feet. "What are you doing?"

She heard her own omni-tool hum and blip as Thane interacted with the handheld and it shot static up her arm, the commander unable to prevent the wiggle that jerked through her. _Fuck_, that felt weird. And good.

"Listen to that as you sleep tonight." He framed her face as he pulled her toward him and pressed a soft kiss to her lips before letting her go just as quickly. "And sleep well, Siha."

She stood in stupid silence before straightening out of her stoop. "…God, you're cute. Are you seriously…is this a lullaby or something?" She pointed to her arm, indicating the hologram that she hadn't initialized.

He smiled at her and shrugged, a new gesture she'd noticed he'd picked up. "Good night."

As she trudged out of life support, how weird she felt finally _hit_ her. She felt fucking floaty. Every time her foot hit the ground, it sent little tingling jolts crawling up her leg. It kind of made her feel like leaping out of her clothes and rolling around on the floor—actually, that sounded like it would feel _really_ good.

She briefly considered the thought, but became distracted when her omni-tool alerted her once more.

Thane.

Every time they made out she walked away feeling like she'd never been kissed so silly in her life. They'd gotten a lot more _into_ it than usual and it had felt _mind blowing_. She questioned her sanity for stopping, but she also realized that the two of them needed to find their stride before the pants came off again. Shepard was far too finicky about this shit.

She still felt dazed. She was so turned on that it was a struggle for her to not turn back and demand more. She wanted more, because what they had done, it had been fucking _wonderful_.

It was in her opinion that action like that demanded a cigarette.

Shepard stood a few feet from life support, a tank top sleeve hanging from one shoulder and her pants riding low along her waistline. A hot mess was what she was sure she looked like, this image only furthered by the package of cigarettes she slid from her pocket.

She brought the cigarette to her mouth and tightened her lips around it, her hands fumbling to find the archaic lighter she'd begun keeping on her person. To her, the first hit was always the best one. The nicotine high hit her like burning and she was slow to expel the smoke from her lungs, the stuff cloying to her hair as well as to her freshly washed clothing.

The commander was beginning to feel more floaty, and each drag from her cigarette tasted kind of like a color. Certainly not any colors that she had ever heard of, or rather, seen, but she imagined that they'd be quite pretty. They tasted pretty. She considered that colors were weird and wondered what she was missing out on by not being a hanar.

Bioluminescence.

Cool word, so it had to be a cool fucking color.

She had been standing in the same spot for ten minutes, unmoving, and had somehow been experiencing the most vividly intense sensations of her life. It was painful to her that she had only just then realized that she had stopped walking.

Then, that thing happened.

An _epiphany_.

Oh, Jesus fucking Christ, she was tripping big time. She was tripping _balls_.

Mordin _hadn't_ been lying.

What the hell was she going to do?

Her cheeks were hot and she could hear the nervous sound of her thumb and forefinger rubbing together; her nose was stuffy, but she could smell the residuals of food that had been cleared out of the dining hall hours ago. Her vision was cloudy, and yet she could see more clearly than she ever had before—and she felt _happy_.

And dizzy.

And hungry.

Shepard was _hungry_.

The commander caught the rather unpleasant scent of smoldering flesh before she felt the burning—instead of pain, she could feel her finger buzzing, _tingling_, and it was only the sight of the already visible blister that startled her into dropping the cigarette that had inched its way deep to the filter.

She stepped on the offensive thing with a frown as she headed toward her food source, not thinking enough to pick the evidence of her habit up from the floor.

Miranda was in the dining hall.

Shepard caught sight of her mop of black hair and stuttered to a stop, her right eye twitching. She was starving, but on the other hand, Miranda. She stood for at least five minutes, lurking in a shadow, feeling like a bad ass, deliberating. She ultimately landed on the side in favor of food, as she'd always known she would.

"Ah, Commander."

"Lawson," Shepard nodded.

She knew The Key to this situation was to speak as little as possible.

The commander opened the fridge and squatted, searching one of the bottom compartments for the protein dense shake she knew was there. Being a biotic meant she had to consume a lot more calories than she felt like eating. She drank them instead.

The cold air of the refrigerator felt _fantastic_ against the commander's heated skin. A tingly feeling broke out across the flesh of her forearm as she shook the bottle that she now had a firm grip on in her hand. She focused on running her other hand along one of the fridge's metal shelves and was entirely ignorant to the burning sensation that was beginning to erupt in her thighs.

"Why do I smell smoke?"

Shepard jumped a little, the commander so deep into her newfound grasp of sensation that she had forgotten that the woman was even there. She stood and closed the refrigerator door. In her weakened state, to lie about the smoke's presence was a thing that never even occurred to her.

"Because I was smoking, Miranda…why else would there be smoke?"

Shepard could read the officer well enough by now to know that she was barely suppressing a snort. Apparently, her answer hadn't been what the woman was expecting. Apparently, there were also a good many other reasons as to why there would be smoke on the Normandy, other reasons such as, 'I don't know.'

Shepard made a mental note to forego social interaction after tonguing a drell, especially with those who were under her command. This situation was embarrassing. She put the head of the bottle in her mouth and gripped it with her teeth as she twisted the cap off and spit it out on the ground.

"A cigarette, Commander? How…posh." Miranda paused, the frame of the data pad she'd been collecting information from dropping with a dainty little clack onto the metallic table beneath. "Typically, smoking within such confined spaces is not something of which Cerberus would happily allow."

Shepard chewed the inside of her cheek for a moment before taking a swig of the thick liquid the plastic bottle contained. The flavor of the protein shake was sweet, chocolaty, and the commander liked to think that the drink was washing away the bitter taste of 'terrorist organization' from her mouth.

She hated when Miranda brought up Cerberus.

"My ship, my rules." Even as she said it, Shepard braced herself for another of Miranda's normative biting quips, but when it failed to come, she glanced up at her from over the rim of the bottle she'd been slurping on only to realize that the woman was smiling.

Miranda didn't inform her that the Normandy was, for all intents and purposes, a Cerberus vessel, that this was a Cerberus operation. She did not insist on spewing her thinly veiled implications of Shepard being a puppet, a person whose presence persisted only because she was of use to an organization she had previously pitted herself against. There was no haughty response. She just sat there, smiling, and then shook her head.

"Regardless, I'm sure for you, there would be exceptions made."

The dynamic had changed between them.

Shepard had helped her.

She sat down at the table, her seat directly across from Miranda's, and fidgeted in her chair, her heightened senses finally seeming to dull. Shepard felt that there was a certain irony to the fact that she had spent a good amount of time helping people piece their families back to some semblance of together when _family_ was a thing she'd never had; this truth had made her expect to be more distant from their problems, but for some reason, she only felt _closer_.

Aiding her crew in dealing with these things had been kind of therapeutic.

Shepard tapped the bottom of her now empty bottle against the table before taking a breath; the silence between them had the major potential to grow into something somewhat awkward. She didn't deal well with awkward.

"Listen. I like you, Miranda. I've figured out that this attitude you have, it's not that you're a total bitch, you just know how to be _efficient_." Shepard inhaled, the bottle clicking against the table more rapidly. "I don't resent you anymore. I blamed you for my shit, even though none of this situation is expressly _your_ fault—you're just doing your damn job. And…I'm lucky for it."

There was another prolonged silence. The way Shepard had ended her speech hadn't offered much of a conclusion, and what had been unspoken was stubborn, a hulking thing hanging in the air between them. There was no moving forward until it was out.

Shepard fucking hated talking about her emotions.

"So, thanks for putting up with my bullshit."

She also hated thanks, particularly when she was the one expressing it.

"Not that I've had much of a choice, Commander." Miranda's tone was well-mannered, the response expected. Her humored smile still remained, but it had softened into something more _genuine_. "But…thank you, too. For saying all of that. It certainly wasn't necessary."

Shepard stuck her hand out across the table, her movement abrupt and confident. "How about we start over?"

Miranda grasped Shepard's hand, the shake firm and short lasting. "I don't think starting over will be needed."

There was something about making amends with someone who'd been a huge pain in the ass for ages while high as a kite that was strangely satisfying. Shepard felt like she'd just taken down a krogan warlord with her bare fists. She was so _enthused_.

Shepard licked her lips and aimed, tossing the bottle she'd been fiddling with into the trash compactor on the other side of the kitchen. She then leaned forward onto the table, the surface a cold presence beneath her forearms, before launching into the next bit of awkwardness she'd never intended on getting out.

There was eye contact, a clear, piercing blue meeting a shade that was far deeper, _stormy_.

"Your sister…she's very pretty."

"She is. And she's safe now, thanks to you. You have my loyalty, Shepard, and my…understanding."

Shepard found herself for the third time that night having to clear her throat.

She was speechless.

_Again_.

It was a frame of being in which she was very unfamiliar. She pushed back in her chair and stood up, her feet feeling far more grounded than they had the previous time she'd tried standing, and brushed coarse strands of hair from her face. "Make sure you get a good night's rest, Miranda—it's going to be a long day tomorrow. I've found that merc bases aren't the most _hospitable_."

"Indeed, they aren't, Commander. Good night."

Shepard dinged the elevator button and tapped her left foot to a rhythm that existed only inside of her own head. She hadn't stopped thinking about Thane. He was always something of a presence in her mind, if not at the back, then at the forefront.

It was strange that he had given her something to listen to, that he had thought that a song would comfort her. Thane had a firmer handle on her personality than she'd ever given him credit for. He _knew _her.

Music was something she'd always responded strongly to—she couldn't stand silences. She'd always gotten a sense of foreboding from them. In the dead heat of battle, there was nothing more _horrifying_ to her than silence. If she couldn't hear a combatant's movements, she found it difficult to track them, and losing control of the enemy, losing the _upper hand_, made an unbreakable nervousness—something that had unfortunately been impossible to train out of her—build in the pit of her stomach.

Sitting alone in silence conjured similar feelings and she couldn't help but become rankled, if a little discomfited, when she found herself in such a situation.

Thanks to music, she rarely did.

Shepard hummed out loud, her fingernails tapping along the wall of the cramped elevator.

Elevator rides always gave her butterflies and she was beginning to feel a little queasy, the feeling starting in her stomach and stopping to bloat in her throat. To distract herself, she pulled up her omni-tool, a little click audible only to her own ears sounding as a static warmth surrounded the length of her forearm.

She tapped against the surface of the hologram she couldn't feel, dragging and dropping her fingertip until she found the file Thane had uploaded onto her handheld only fifteen minutes earlier. She was even more positive now that he had sent her a lullaby, though she could not read the title of the song. The words, she guessed, did not have a translatable meaning.

A lullaby.

Such a small thing, but Shepard felt ready to burst from her seams. It was fragile sounding, simplistic and puerile—the melody was something she could relate to the children's songs her improvised adoptive father used to play for her. The music was purely instrumental, the sound something that reminded her of a piano, and it made her smile.

It was kind of comforting, and more than anything, she wanted to know the meaning behind it.

Right as she made it to the fourth floor, she dinged the button to go back down. If she were EDI and she had to deal with this elevator shit constantly, she would fucking implode. Shepard crossed her arms, her shoulders slouching unattractively; she was coming down from whatever high she'd been on and she was _tired_. As sleepy as she was, she knew that she wouldn't be able to rest without asking _questions_.

The door to life support hissed open and dark enveloped her form as she made her way in. Thane sat propped up by a pillow on his cot, bare-chested, and a low light source illuminated only enough area for the drell to be able to see the material he was reading. There was a smile playing at his lips, the only acknowledgement he gave of Shepard's presence.

"A _paper_ book. I'm guessing you got that from Kasumi?"

"Yes." The drell did not look up, his dark eyes still focused entirely on the book. "Did you need something?"

Shepard sighed and played at the hem of her tank top, not wanting to answer the question he probably knew the answer to anyway. She huffed a little and crossed her arms with a shiver, the coldness of the ship finally something she was once again aware of now that her high had officially worn off. "I don't have to sleep alone. I don't wanna."

"And why should you?" He tugged back the corner of the blanket, the gesture meant to invite her in, and she kicked her shoes off before piling on top of him.

Neither of them spoke for some time and Thane finally shifted beneath her, his arm drawing out from underneath the sparse blanketing to drop the book he'd been reading and to quiet the light source. Shepard sighed and buried her face into the crook of his neck, Thane weaving his fingers into her hair once more after she settled. That was kind of his go-to place, it seemed, and it always made her feel good.

"Why did you give that to me without explaining? You knew it was just going to make me bother you some more."

"That was my hope, Siha. You needed to have an excuse to come back to me tonight. I wanted you here."

She really wouldn't have if she hadn't had some semblance of a reason.

"You are a conniving bastard."

"No more so than you are, Siha."

Shepard laughed and traced the waistband of his 'pajama' bottoms, her finger curling around the elastic and stretching it out before allowing it to snap back and pop against his skin. "These are awfully tight to sleep in."

"Everything I wear is tight."

Shepard grinned and did her best to mimic his voice, her own growing gruff and raspy. "Indeed."

"That was not a very good impression."

Shepard pinched his bare bicep, her laugh more audible than the last, and traced her finger along one of the stripes that ran horizontally across his flesh. She ignored him otherwise, but made a mental note to practice for her next attempt at mockery.

"I needed to ask…" Shepard's voice was quiet once more and Thane pressed a kiss to the top of her head before responding.

"Yes?"

"Um, the song you gave me. What does it mean to you?"

"My mother played it for me once when I was very young. After I left to fulfill my duty to the Compact, I used to…recall it when I was lonely or found myself unable to sleep. I only recently found the song again—I never knew the title. The lullaby provided me with comfort, and so I passed it on to you."

"That's…" Shepard pulled back to look at him, her eyes searching his, and she cupped his face with her hands before chastely kissing him. "You are so _sweet_ for an assassin."

Thane pulled her in for another kiss, his tongue gently lining the fullness of her bottom lip before he pulled back. Shepard's foot slipped from the mattress and she heaved an exaggerated sigh. She was tired of feeling so _confined_.

"Hey, Thane?"

"Yes?"

"We should start sleeping in my room."


	4. Girl Talk

**A/N: **Thanks for all of the kind words! You guys are seriously the best. :}

NSAS, you inspire the shit out of me.

* * *

The cold of metal was an even presence against the middle of Shepard's back; her legs were spread and pulled out in front of her, bent at the knee, and she sat with her head tossed back against the armory gun table. Her butt was aching, the grated floor she had been sitting on for at least thirty minutes a literal pain in the ass. Had her new found friend not been sitting immediately to the left of her, she would have considered finding a better place to lounge.

The commander was also just lazy.

Normally blonde hair took on a unique honey-brown sheen, the wet tendrils plastered to her head and dripping onto her shoulders and collarbone; the two of them were both freshly showered. She smelled like flowers—a fact which no longer annoyed her—and he smelled like gun powder and oil.

He always smelled the same.

She thought about asking him if he'd ever scrubbed his ass a day in his life, let alone just now, because his _smell_ was constant—and she was kind of in an ornery mood. She parted her lips to speak, but her jaw snapped to a close just as quickly as she'd opened it. He'd finally stopped _talking_, and she didn't want to get him revved up again. Shepard was not blind to the irony in her relief over this fact. She allowed herself a subdued grin.

Forcing these talks—he wasn't big on that.

For all that a shower had done to make her feel renewed, her muscles still ached from the battle they'd just returned from and she felt drained, the adrenaline rush she commonly got from killing dissipating entirely. She rubbed at a fresh bruise that marred her clavicle while placing her forehead in her other hand, the commander suppressing the need to flinch.

Her collarbone should have been broken, or at the very least _cracked_. Her shields had dropped and she'd stepped right in front of a krogan's charge, catching the brunt of the attack with a shoulder; her ceramic plating had shattered cleanly and if it hadn't have been for the lift field Jacob had aimed at the warlord, he likely would've had to carry her unconscious ass out of there.

Shepard knew that if it weren't for her upgraded body, she wouldn't have escaped with only a purpling bruise. She also knew that without the _improvements_ she probably wouldn't have gotten herself into such a situation in the first place—she was a lot more reckless than she used to be. Or perhaps brain death had made her permanently stupid.

"You know, sometimes I miss having a private shower, but then the shit hits me that I don't even remember what it's like. Must be _nice_."

She ignored him for the moment.

_Tense_.

She was still tense. She'd bumped into Jack before the mission, and that bitch always set her on edge. Pragia. That was her current obsession, her current _demand_. The commander had ultimately asked Joker to plot the course; they'd be there tomorrow. Jack was satiated, for the time being.

That wasn't what had her tense. It was who they were taking, who they'd _decided_ to take. She'd always felt like her crew deserved some choice. There was a time when, if she'd had personal shit to take care of, there wasn't a single one of them she would've wanted to accompany her. Jack had chosen Thane, because 'he was the one she'd least likely want to kill if he saw shit she didn't want him to; he was already dying anyway'. But Shepard knew better. Jack chose Thane because he was the most _understanding_. The bitch may not have social skills, but she _knew_ people.

Tense.

Tense because she'd read about Pragia, the constant rain, the humidity; the threat to Thane's health.

She'd have to talk to him about it.

But she didn't want to think about that right now.

Jacob let out a sigh beside her, his thigh tensing against her booted ankle as he readjusted his position. The two of them sat shoulder to shoulder. The still that had overtaken them returned after a short time, and Shepard traced a fingertip against a jagged snag in her tank top. The ship was so loud to her today—creaking and whirring and humming—that she didn't quite consider what they were sitting in silence.

Shepard bit the inside of her cheek, her mood contemplative. She was once again up to no good, something that was becoming more and more usual since she'd been _reanimated_. The thought was met with a subconscious lip curl, the subtle twitching of her mouth not quite registering. After something like that, restrictions didn't mean as much to the commander as they'd used to.

The discussion they'd been having had waned. Shepard was no longer interested in talking about the advantages of the M-300 Claymore over the M-27 Scimitar (she couldn't shoot a shotgun for shit in the first place). She also didn't care to listen to him prattle on about the badass headshot he'd cranked out on the very last merc as they were leaving—though seeing it had been pretty fucking cool (she didn't want to acknowledge that her reluctance to speak about it was due to the bitterness she had over not getting the last kill), nor did she want to discuss the disparity between their biotic implants (that was an exhausted subject if she'd ever heard one). She also didn't want to talk about the mission.

She wanted to cut the marine talk. The mood for it had passed, and right now, the mission, their primary objective, her reason for being _alive_, was as out of mind for her as possible—on the fringe, but not crowding her other thoughts, the ones that were suddenly more important, because now she had some time to _breathe_.

It was a different kind of talk entirely that the commander was craving.

She found comfort in thinking that if she didn't stop obsessing about the bad shit, she'd drive herself crazy—she _needed_ to justify to herself taking a few hours of time to set aside for a little irresponsibility, not that it was a hard thing for her to do anymore.

Girl talk.

_She needed it_.

Shepard smoothed a hand over her thigh. There was a bulge in her side pant pocket. It was innocuous, because it wasn't visible—she could just feel it. It didn't have much weight to it, this bulge, but it was heavy in her pocket despite this. She slipped her hand in and clasped at the bag with her fingers, the content of this package bumpy and rough even through the plastic material encasing it.

She had bought something she shouldn't have.

Jacob rolled his shoulders next to her, his joints popping. She sucked at her teeth with her tongue.

She didn't know how to broach the subject and she definitely didn't know how he'd _react_, nor did she _care_. The only thing on Shepard's mind was the potential to get a rise out of the _too_ together operative, and she figured that this would be just the way to do it. She ran a finger over the length of the baggie before mentally shrugging. She'd just blunder through this like she did everything else, and it would go _swimmingly_.

She nudged him in the arm with her elbow and he looked over at her, his brows pinched downward. He hated it when she did that. "I need your undivided attention, soldier."

"Something wrong, Commander?"

She shook her head, her hand still stuffed in a pocket.

_The_ pocket.

"No, nothing's wrong, but," she lowered her voice, leaning in closely to the manly smelling operative. "There's a _reason_ I have a bag full of pot in my pocket right now. I have a theme of the day, it being: _High as a Fucking Kite_. Bearing that in mind, care to guess what that reason is?"

He pulled away from her and brushed his mouth with the back of a hand; she couldn't tell what face he was pulling. It was nearly enough to make her frown, because seeing his expression was half the fun.

"No, Commander. I don't. And just so you know, you're a _damn_ bad influence."

She shrugged, took the baggy out of her pocket, and opened it.

By the year 2025, marijuana had been legalized in the United States. A couple years later, after a few prissy politicians had been elected to office, the drug had once again been outlawed—as the commander understood it, with harsher penalties employed than before for those found with the substance. Similar to the prohibition of alcohol in 1920, the law was repealed a dozen years later due to its futility. The government had also wanted to tax the fuck out of it. International legalization had been achieved by the year 2050, if she remembered right.

That didn't keep marijuana from being taboo, however –many humans _still_ found the substance deplorable or irresponsible or deviant – kind of like sex, or alcohol. Unless you were down and out with some incurable disease, you had no right to be smoking the shit. _Period_. Shepard had never understood why people had the tendency to hate so many things that felt good, but there it was.

Humans were so _uptight_, but _aliens_ – aliens had the right idea.

The substance was generally accepted among the galactic community, and it was expensive as _shit_. For some aliens, like turians, THC did nothing—but for the ones who were able to experience the high, it turned out that exotic drugs were quite _marketable_.

It was a good thing Shepard was on Cerberus's pay grade.

Clouds billowed around in her solar plexus; the smoke burned in a way that was twice as intense as her cigarettes, though it wasn't hard for her to adjust to the sensation. She didn't cough, but Jacob coughed to the side of her, the joint she'd just passed back to him already half way gone.

Smoke rose from the tip and Shepard's eyes followed the stream on its path up to the ceiling, the fluorescent lighting white and unpleasant, but shining through the gray, ebbing screen in a way that was _entrancing_. Her vision was cut off at a certain point as the smoke worked its way above the edge of the gun table they were sitting beneath, but its presence was continuous.

Smoke was weird.

Jacob coughed again, his elbow digging into her side.

He was also weird.

She was still stunned that the operative had taken her up on the whole…weed thing. She kind of hated the shit most of the time, especially the way it smelled (especially _now_), but sometimes she liked the way it made her feel. She hadn't been planning on smoking any of it—she'd just wanted to get a rise out of him. For the man to calmly take the bag from her and smoke the pre-rolled joint he'd pulled out of it like a motherfucking pro was something Shepard had never expected.

She didn't know if she bought the _act_ or not—it was entirely likely that Jacob was just pushing back, but she wasn't going to be the one to puss out first.

It wasn't even like it was a big deal for them – as biotics, they had a fast metabolism which burned its way through most things: highs, caloric intake, toxins; all things consumed were out of their system at much higher rates than they were for normal humans. Add that to Shepard's Cerberus _enhancements_, and this deal worked doubly so for her –the implants eliminated pollutants from her body quickly.

This was unfortunate in some ways, because it took triple the work for Shepard to feel any amount of _hammered_, but she also counted herself lucky. The implants had taken care of the poison some stupid fucking batarian had slipped her at Afterlife the other night, and they also helped to impress at bars – she'd earned a lot of intel from shitfaced club-goers who had a hard-on for a woman who could drink her weight in krogan liquor without so much as a belch.

She guessed these things had a way of balancing out in the long run, and balance was something she liked.

"So, commander, you ever going to tell me what this is all about?"

Yes, she was. This thing had been weighing down on her. This thing was cracking her composure. This thing had been giving her the strangest, most vivid sex dreams. This thing was making her _frustrated_.

Yes, she needed to share.

She shrugged. "I thought you said you didn't want to know."

"No, I said I didn't care to _guess_."

Shepard tugged her legs up to her chest and finally looked away from the ceiling, the bright white lighting burning black speckles into her retinas. A chill permeated through her and she focused her gaze entirely onto the glint reflecting from the freshly shined pistol directly to her left. She found that she couldn't look away from it.

"I think oral contact with Thane gets me high."

There was silence then as a moment passed for comprehension to take hold.

"Like those frogs?"

She leveled a punch to his bicep hard enough to make a cracking noise and he grunted. The cracking, she belatedly realized, was the sound of her knuckles popping. It stung, but she didn't regret it, because she was sure he'd have a bruise to show for it in a few hours. "Don't even fucking go there, bud."

"Chill, Commander. It was an honest question." He absently rubbed at his upper arm, his elbow once again bumping into hers. "That's, uh…pretty weird, anyway. Maybe you should talk to Mordin about it."

She grimaced and scratched the back of her neck, her foot tapping against the grated floor. _Awkward_. "No, I mean, Mordin kind of…warned me a while back. But I thought he was joking, because he said all kinds of ridiculous things about drell dicks an—"

"Commander, watch the _details_." He was looking at her now, his hands raised in a gesture to signal for her to stop, and his eyebrows were raised high onto his forehead. Incredulity: she'd guess that that's what he was genuinely experiencing at the moment. She pressed onward.

"They're fucking ribbed, Jacob. _Ribbed_."

"_Commander_."

"I didn't believe it, but Mordin sent me pamphlets, diagrams…I –"

"Gross. _Gross_, Shepard."

"No, the opposite of—they're so _pretty_ and…_fuck_."

He glared at her and made an irritated, coughing noise in the back of his throat. "Well, damn, I never stood a chance."

"Nope." Shepard elongated her legs out in front of her and rolled her shoulders before dipping into a stretch, her arms reaching out to grab at her toes and her hamstrings crying out a stinging protest. "But count yourself lucky. We are far too similar, Jacob. I'd probably kill you or something."

"I'd like to see you _try_."

His arms were crossed over his chest and his chin jutted out, the smoke he held between thumb and index finger burning out entirely. Shepard grabbed it from him. Jacob was really irritating sometimes.

"I _will_, when you're least expecting it."

"Catching me off guard—the only way you could ever do it. I doubt you could even then, Commander."

Nice baiting.

Shepard rolled her eyes before dropping what little remained of the joint into her baggie and stuffing the stash back into her pocket. She kept the lighter out and started a cigarette, noting that Jacob didn't have any snark to give her over her habit this time around. "We'll see."

"Mmhmm."

There was another thing that had been bothering her lately. It wasn't just that she was feeling rebellious; she was also just _really_ horny. She had gotten to the point where she couldn't think straight. This sexual _frustration_ was starting to build up in her, and she didn't know what to do. She wouldn't allow herself to think that it was affecting the mission, but she _feared_ that it was. She took a drag from her cigarette.

Commander Shepard couldn't concentrate.

"Did Miranda seem extra bitchy to you today?"

"What?" She didn't hear him, because she'd been thinking about sex. She rubbed her eyes with thumb and forefinger before sighing out nice and slow.

"Seem out of it, Shepard. Miranda, did she seem bitchier than usual?"

"Oh. A little. But to be fair, we were ambushed. That mission should have gone without a hitch. It was a real get in, get out kind of a deal. I would be bitchy too if I had the energy."

She could see out of the corner of her eye that he had nodded, seeming to accept her answer. "You always have the energy."

"You're a real douche nozzle, Jacob." He turned to look at her, and she looked back. They were having an intense stare down. She felt like she was winning. She squinted, and he squinted back. "Speaking of Miranda, I've been meaning to ask…"

"Ask." He wanted to blink, but he didn't. Shepard knew because she could see one of his lower eyelids twitching. She blew a stream of smoke into his face.

Still no blinking.

"What was sex with Miranda like?"

"Why do you ask me this shit?"

"Just answer me." He didn't. She sighed.

He broke their staring contest by looking away. Shepard grinned, her cheeks dimpling, and she rubbed her eyes after she flicked her cigarette over the rim of the table. "I think we should focus on the mission, Commander."

"Jacob, you just smoked half a bag of weed with me. There was a fourth of an ounce in there."

He breathed audibly and then let out a short "ha," which was immediately followed by a lot of other "ha's." Shepard just stared at him, unimpressed. He was so dumb. She'd never noticed how stupid his laugh sounded before. Maybe "ha" was an improper description, because it kind of sounded like a lot of "heh's."

Heh. Heheheh.

Heh.

Her cheeks puffed up and she put her hands over her mouth, her eyes watering; she was straining to contain her own laughter. It bubbled upward anyway and she couldn't stop. It had been a long time since she'd gotten the _giggles_. She wanted to tell him that he sounded ridiculous, but she couldn't muster the breath.

She wiped her eyes as their hilarity subsided and leaned the back of her head against the table, a thudding sound emanating. Laughing was the only time not breathing ever felt good. Jacob glanced at her and Shepard gave him a lopsided smile. She wasn't expecting anything.

"It was like her."

"Perfect?"

"The best."

His inhibitions were obviously lowered, because she knew he would never answer a question like that otherwise.

"God, I'm just realizing how awkward asking you that was. Oh, fuck me, why did I ask."

"Didn't I just ask you that? And now you're asking yourself."

"Shut up."

He did, and they sat there. She couldn't imagine what it would be like having a person she used to screw around with onboard. Shepard didn't know if she'd be able to maintain that kind of professionalism, but Jacob and Miranda did it well. The commander would probably never be able to work with Kaidan on that level again. She frowned and rubbed the tip of her nose.

"Do you miss her?"

"Yeah, Commander. Sometimes, I really do. But it's time to move on, so I have."

She knew what that was like.

"Jacob, you know who's _really_ sexy?"

"Don't say Krios."

"Kasumi. And, you don't need me to tell you that Thane is sexy. It goes without saying."

He made a grumbling sound in the back of his throat, otherwise noncommittal. Or she took it as him being noncommittal, anyway.

"Don't make that noise at me. I know you've been looking at his ass."

"You can't even _see_ his ass—his jacket has a fucking _butt cape_ on it."

"See there, you've been _looking_. You also immediately tried to change the subject. Why is that?"

"You should really stop trying to play matchmaker, Commander. You aren't good at it."

"But –"

"Just let nature run its course."

"Are you saying a course is running?" She knew it. She _knew_ it.

"I'm not saying anything."

She'd been trying to hook them up ever since Kasumi had admitted her crush on the guy. She was winning. Her butt was also hurting. Shepard sat up onto her knees and bounced a little, a wince marring her expression. She was 100% certain that she had half a dozen bruises in the shape of Jacob's ugly armory floor carved out into her ass.

That was going to be a hard thing to explain to Thane.

Well, if it ever got that far.

"So, I take it Thane hasn't laid the pipe yet?"

"_What_? Jacob, you are gross." That was as abrupt as it was _startling_. Like he was reading her thoughts…

She squinted at him.

"Didn't answer the question, Commander."

"Okay then. No, we haven't had sex. And I'm so fucking turned on all the time that it's driving me fucking _crazy_. We just do stuff that frustrates me. I can't even _masturbate_, because he's always there—"

"_Details_."

"You asked motherfucker, and now you're going to _hear_ it. The closest we've ever gotten to it is dry humping in the vents and—"

"The vents? And you call me gross?" He shifted and turned his back to her, popping onto his knees. He was about to leave and she could imagine the frown that lined his serious face. The image was strangely satisfying. He may have wanted to go, but she wouldn't let him.

She still owed him an ass kicking.

"You are too much, Commander—"

Shepard leapt out of her squatted position and hooked her arm around Jacob's neck, her free hand gripping the back of his shaved head; he struggled against her, both hands gripping at her forearms, and she dug her knee into his back. She bowed him over, his knees planting onto the ground, and shoved his cheek against the hard grating of the cold metal floor—he grumbled out a protest, but had otherwise stilled.

"The fuck, Shepard?"

"_Gotcha_."

He grunted, and with a jerk and the sudden lift of his ass, flipped her over his shoulders. She landed with an 'oof' across from him and sat up just as he got a firm grip on her ankle.

"Wait, wait, time out!" She was on her hands and knees looking over a shoulder with her palm out, her fingers widely splayed.

"Fine."

She crawled around to the other side of the gun table and squatted, her attention drawn to the heavy breathing of the person directly opposite her. Shepard could hear him shifting; she thought she could tell by the sound of his movements that he had sat back down in the place that they had started out, but she wasn't certain. She could hear the popping of metal as he settled against the counter.

She needed to make sure.

"So…" she panted, a laugh bubbling its way up from her throat.

"So?"

Ah.

She could tell _exactly_ where he was.

She gripped the edge of the table, her own breathing already level, before she hauled herself up and barreled over the top of it, landing on the operative in a body slam. He let out some sort of startled, strangled _noise_ (Shepard wasn't quite sure what the fuck to call it) and she scrambled to get a good grip around his wrists while he was still attempting to recover.

Increased muscle density, countless _weaves_—these things made the commander stronger than her operative, and for the time being, she was enjoying the upgrades Cerberus had given her. These things, however, did not make her heavier than Jacob; he had a clear advantage. While the wind was still knocked out of him, she scooted up farther on his chest and pinned him so that he couldn't flip her again, all of this happening in less than four seconds.

"_God dammit_, Shepard."

"Did I come at a bad time?"

The hissing sound of a door opening should have alerted them to her presence, but it didn't. Shepard startled and whipped her head around seconds before Jacob shoved her from his chest. She stood and smoothed out her tank top awkwardly before tucking strands of now-dry hair behind an ear. She smiled as she shoved her hands into her pockets and ran her tongue over her teeth.

Shepard wasn't going to break the quiet, because she wanted one of them to.

"Kasumi."

"Jake."

"I'm, uh, going to get back to work. See ya Commander, Kasumi."

He turned to his access terminal. It was a clear dismissal.

That elevator, again. She fucking hated the elevator. She whistled and Kasumi bounced on her toes, what little the commander could see of her face lit up in a subtle smile. There were butterflies in the pit of her stomach. She couldn't stand it. Getting off of the damn thing was always her favorite part.

Shepard liked being in the observation room a hell of a lot more than being in the armory. It was much more _pleasant_. She settled into the plush cushions of Kasumi's couch and relaxed for the first time since she'd woken up in her bed with Thane that morning.

"EDI told me where I'd find you. She's sweet."

"For an AI."

"She's _always_ listening."

"Kind of like you," Shepard smiled. "Sorry you walked in on that. Um, it probably looked pretty weird, but I was just kicking his ass. Someone's gotta keep him in line."

"No complaints here, Shep. I've never seen Jacob knocked flat like that. It was _impressive_."

_You will again one day, in an entirely different context_. Shepard wanted to say it, but she didn't. She shrugged instead. "So what's this about?"

Kasumi was talking, but Shepard could barely track what she was saying. The commander was too distracted; she was too _loopy_. She could sense that this was supposed to be a serious conversation; she could sense that she was supposed to be more out of her own head for this, but she couldn't snap out of it. Shepard caught a few words: Jacob, crush. Flirt.

Keiji.

Kasumi was breaking down over Keiji.

Shepard couldn't keep track of what she was saying.

Well, maybe it wasn't quite a break down, but—

Shepard blinked. "You don't seem the type to need reassurance."

"Should I feel guilty, Shep?"

"No, Kasumi. Why would you?"

"Well, I feel confused. All of the memories I had of Keiji are still so fresh, but I like Jacob. I really do. Is that _right_?"

There were no tears; that was a plus.

She felt like a bad friend. She reached out and—

Pat, pat, pat.

She didn't know what else to do.

"Well…"

"I'm unloading this on you, aren't I?"

Yes. Yes she was.

The way they were sitting, Shepard could see Kasumi's eyes. They seemed sad; _lost_. Shepard was the last person she should be asking. Shepard couldn't give her proper _counsel_. Furthermore, Shepard was more than probably too high for this situation, even though she _swore_ she was already coming down. Those _eyes_, though.

She wanted to help the thief, she just didn't know how.

_Fuck it_.

She was through being frigid, and she had certainly never respected personal boundaries—she gripped Kasumi's hands in hers and squeezed them before tugging her into a hug. She more than understood what the thief was going through, even if she didn't know what advice she should be giving her.

"Kasumi…" It was awkward, because the commander didn't really know how to hug most people. She was too stiff; her elbows stuck out too much and the hug was loose. Kasumi's hood tickled at her nose and she closed her eyes. The thief smelled like roses. "I've lost two people I was really in love with. I moved on. I never felt guilty over it. Just because the one you love stops living, doesn't mean you have to."

She was insensitive, but it was the only way she knew how to deal with things.

Shepard pulled away and offered the thief a quick smile. "So what I'm saying is, I think, Kasumi, that you're _thinking_ too much."

"I guess I should just go with the flow, huh?"

Shepard put her arm around her and pressed a kiss to her cheek. "Let nature run its course, baby doll."

* * *

Being here reminded her of earth. It was mostly the heat; it was so hot at the core of the ship that sweat had already begun to slick her forehead. Her city had always been hot, and though many would have described it as being unpleasant, she had happened to have liked it a lot when she had lived there. The heat had been normal to her, and it was still something that made her feel good. The rest of the ship was cold, _sterile_—but here, it was _alive_.

More so than being hot, the core was also _loud_. The humming wasn't just in the peripheral—the noise wasn't muted or subtle, and therefore it wasn't annoying to her; it was everywhere, and it _pulsated_. She'd wager that it was the noisiest area of the ship, and to her, it was the perfect place to come and think, though she could hardly hear her own thoughts above the continuous drone.

Shepard needed stress relief. She couldn't stop fantasizing; she couldn't stop thinking about what that side of Thane must be like. The little peeks she'd gotten weren't enough; instead of tiding her over, they built up, and there wasn't much room left for more. She wanted to know what he'd feel like, how he'd act—how he'd _sound_. She wanted to know what _she_ would feel like.

Shepard felt impossibly hotter.

She wanted _release_. She gripped the lowest bar of the railing and closed her eyes, her head tilting back. Sweat dripped into her hair from her forehead and she shivered at the feel, much preferring this to the clean, fresh dampness of a shower. She sensed a presence behind her (she sure as hell couldn't hear _it_) and her eyes blinked open, a blush creeping across her face.

"Siha."

The way she had her head tossed back, her face appeared upside down to him. She was pretty sure she looked like a silly bitch.

"Thane." Her mouth twitched, her neck beginning to ache, but she didn't right herself. "What are you doing down here?"

"I could see you from that window," he pointed as he spoke in order to specify. "I hadn't been in your company since this morning, so I decided to rectify that."

Shepard gripped the railing and shifted her weight onto it before bringing herself to her knees and shoving a hand out towards the drell. He grasped it without hesitation and sat down across from her, his legs folding into an Indian-style sit. She pulled her knees to her chest and chewed on a fingernail, her head cocked to the side; she stared at him unflinchingly while the drell nictitated, his two sets of lids closing over his eyes at varying rates.

This was probably another one of those times that he thought she was weird. She covered her cheeks in her hands in order to hide the creeping blush and closed her eyes _slowly_, the place between her brows wrinkling and the skin around her nose scrunching. There was complete silence between them as she struggled to find something to say, but Thane just sat there with a patient air about him. She wished she had that.

"So…" she started.

"Is there something wrong?"

Their voices were elevated in order to accommodate the level of noise.

"No, I was just…" She frowned, the crease between her brows deepening. "I was just _thinking_."

"Ah, I am sure there are many things for you to think about. Was there anything in particular?"

He sought out eye contact and she avoided it, drawing her shoulders up in a shrug. She bit her lip and brushed sweat-sticky bangs out of her face before looking up at him—she felt more timid than she ever had before in her _life_. It was kind of pissing her off. She needed to pull herself together, to deflect. She couldn't think about sex.

She wouldn't.

"Do you ever miss Kahje?"

"Mm, to a certain degree—though all of the things I cherish of my home world are simply a memory away."

That was something she wondered about—his _memories_. It would be strange to be able to relive almost every single life experience at the drop of a hat; she couldn't decide if it were more a blessing than it was a curse. Being able to _forget_, that was something that made life livable.

There were so many _things_ she didn't know about him. She had questions, but she was hesitant to ask them; she didn't want to overstep any boundaries, and she still didn't know what those were. Why did everything have to be so _undefined_? Tip-toeing around was such _bullshit_.

"Okay, I have a question."

"Yes?"

"It's kind of awkward."

Thane shrugged.

"What's the point of having sex after you've had it the first time if you can just relive it any time you want?"

There it was. The sex thing again. She hoped that she wasn't transparent.

"What is the point of me eating a favorite food if I can just relive what it was like to have eaten it in the first place? There is still a physical urge—a _need_—to taste the food on my tongue, and there comes with it a certain…fulfillment."

"_Oh god_," she whispered under her breath with a hand over her mouth, the barely spoken words lost to the sound of the ship's core. She swallowed and shifted in place, her hand reaching up to wipe the dripping sweat that glistened on her forehead. That analogy was not helping things. Thane doing things with his mouth, Thane having physical urges, needs; Thane wanting _fulfillment_ (god, how she wanted fulfillment)—these were things she didn't need to think about.

She was pretty sure her sexual frustration levels had just reached an all time high.

What was he doing to her?

She picked at her boot and chewed on her lips. "Um, I have another question."

"Go ahead, Siha."

"This one is even more awkward."

"More so than the last?"

"Indeed," she mimicked.

"You've improved."

"I've been practicing…"

"The question?"

Right. The question.

"Is she," Shepard blurted, but stumbled when she noticed how raised Thane's brows were. He was probably thinking: '"She" is a very vague way to start out this question, Siha.' She hid her face in her hands, her voice muffled. "Is Irikah the only person you've, um…done the _deed_ with?"

"Yes. There have been many opportunities, but battle sleep has a way of making things like intimacy…_undesirable_."

She reached out to grab his hand before placing a quick kiss to his palm. "Good thing you woke up, then."

"Siha…"

She crawled toward him and placed her hands on either thigh, the feel of the firm muscle of his legs against her palms enough to make her stomach hitch. "I want…"

This was inappropriate.

Thane leaned into her, his nose pressing against her own; she could feel his breath against her lips. His hands came up to grab the sides of her face and he pulled her into a kiss, his mouth already open. She poked her tongue along the seam of his lips and he rolled his own back against her, a moan escaping the commander as he did so.

She pulled back from him and crawled into his lap, trailing a finger down the side of his frill as she did so; the drell's hands gripped her waist and he pulled her impossibly tighter to him. Shepard just wanted to _disappear_ into him, and she knew she was crazy for thinking so. She buried her face into his neck and inhaled, the familiar dull of leather saturating her senses. "I have one more question."

He kissed the top of her head. "Ask."

"Do you ever think about what we did in the vents? _Relive_ it?

"I believe you are already aware of the answer to that one."

"I wish I could do that."

"You shouldn't have to," he whispered as he spread a hand up the expanse of her rib cage and she arched into the drell's touch, the swell of her breasts pressing into his chest; she could barely hear him. His hand hovered for a moment, like he wanted to touch her there, but was stricken with indecision.

She made a frustrated sound in the back of her throat and rolled her hips against him. "Touch it—god, _touch me_."

The material of the tank top was thin; she could feel the texture of his hand through it and the sensation left her breathless. He massaged her breast and ran his thumb over her nipple; the commander placed her chin on one of his shoulders, a moaning gasp escaping her lips. _That_ was what she needed—well, _almost_. She ran her hand down his zipper and cupped his crotch, the drell jerking against her.

"Wait, Siha—not here." Even as he said it, his palm was still on her breast. "It would be unwise to do this in the one area that every possible person on the ship could see."

Fuck.

"_Fuck_, you're right." She reluctantly climbed off of Thane and sat next to him, folding her legs in front of her. She inhaled deeply and ran a hand through sweaty hair. For the second time that day, she was shoulder to shoulder with someone, sitting on the floor. She grabbed his hand and he smiled at her. It really didn't make sense—the Normandy was full of chairs. Something was tickling at the back of her mind; she had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach and it confused her until she remembered what it was about.

That tension from earlier returned.

"Oh, I needed to talk to you about something."

"Yes?"

"Jack wants you to go to Pragia with us. It's not very…temperate. Will your health compromise the mission?"

That was a rude way of asking the question, but it wasn't the status of the mission she was concerned about. She didn't want to think about it.

He raised his brows at her, his lips momentarily pressing together. "Siha, it would be no different than you inhaling cigarette smoke. The short-term affects are minimal—I only experience, on occasion, minor discomfort. It's only through continued exposure over time that my lungs have begun to deteriorate. Living in such an environment would be problematic; a short mission to Pragia, however, I will be able to handle."

He had some easily wounded pride. "That's good. 'Was just asking."

_Wait_.

Wait a second.

Shepard turned away from him, removing her hand from his, and coughed into her palm. She dared a glance at him—he was _smirking_. He knew she knew he knew and…she turned away and sputtered into her palm again. "Who told you?"

"No one, but you've just confirmed my suspicions. I can smell it, taste it…and you left a cigarette butt outside of my room the other day. It appears that you are not as stealthy as you thought. You've picked up a _nefarious_ habit, Siha."

"Are you disappointed?"

"Of course not. Your body is your own—though it does…confuse me to see another destroying their lungs with _purpose_ as opposed to having no other option."

_Oh_.

That was why.

Everything clicked then. The sensation felt so real to her that she could _hear_ it, and it was dizzying. The smoking; the need that she _felt_ and _perceived_, the theory that it was only her way of trying to reconnect to her past life. It was all wrong. It didn't matter. She took a carton out of her pocket and fiddled with her lighter.

She didn't want him to be alone.

Shepard leaned against him and with steady hands, took a puff off of her freshly lit cigarette.

She had a lot of catching up to do.

"It's _crowded_ in here. Wanna get something to eat?"

All of this girl talk was fucking exhausting.


	5. First Taste

**A/N: **Oh, look. No Jacob in this chapter.

also, happy late birthday icca. ilu forever and ever. also, this is not the thing i am doing for you, just so we're clear. that comes later.

Anyway,

I was going to put this one off a couple of more updates, but my Shep wouldn't let me progress beyond this, and she usually gets what she wants.

So, behold:

Shameless smut with a side of sickening fluff.

* * *

_Thrust, thrust, thrust._

_ In, out._

_ Curl the toes and—_

_ Breathe._

_ Take it all in and…_

_Inhale, exhale, pull_.

_Puff, puff, puff._

There was something about being spread out on the floor, flat on her back with her legs spread, that was strangely relaxing; she couldn't pinpoint what exactly it was. The constant hip curls only helped to soothe her further; she had one of her legs sticking straight out in the air, the other bent at the knee with a foot on the floor to hold her. Her shoulder blades dug into the carpet and she breathed out a steady, puffing stream of air.

_Inhale, exhale through center, and again_.

She pointed her outreached foot and flexed, her fingers clenching just as much as the firm muscles in her torso were. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she concentrated on her precise movements, the tendons in her neck tightening.

_Up, flex, down_.

"What is it you're doing?"

_Flex, up, point, reach_.

"Easing tension."

"Interesting method. Is it meant to be attractive?"

She brought her legs back to center, her upper thighs and knees pressing against her chest as she curled into a ball, before she released the pose and flattened onto the ground entirely. "Why, is it?"

The drell made a clearing sound in the back of his throat, but otherwise said nothing. She wasn't sure whether or not to take that as confirmation. Exercise had a way of making people look goofy as fuck.

"Pilates. Human exercise – and definitely better than meditation, by the way."

"Debatable."

"You would think so." She inched out of her position on the floor and crawled on hands and knees over to her couch, heaving herself up onto it and sprawling out in a show of lackadaisical nonchalance. "But to me, there's nothing better. Except for maybe a cigarette or five."

The texture and temperature of the couch against her sweat soaked skin was uncomfortable – as the bared portions of her shoulder blades met the black leather she tensed, her breath hitching in the back of her throat; she'd expected the coldness before it had touched her, but she was still surprised out of the relaxedness her ritualistic exercise had put her in. She leaned all the way back despite her discomfort; she would not be put out by this couch – it would warm to her, _bend_ to her. It would not happen the other way around.

Thane took a seat next to her and she eyed him briefly before crossing her legs in front of her and slouching, her lips pouting as she began popping her knuckles. Sitting like a man – that's what her father would have called it. All of his efforts to instill in her the politeness that was expected of her had been washed away with his blood spatters that had painted their front porch one morning in a distant, faraway memory.

Shepard smirked and raised her arms above her head, crossing them behind her neck; she smelled fine enough. She once again peeked over at Thane out of the corner of her eye; his arms were folded in front of him, his back ramrod straight – he seemed normal today. She'd worried about the whole Jack situation for nothing. Thane was unaffected.

She wished all missions were as easy as that. There had been mercs to dispatch of, sure (when weren't there?), but they had blown through them like they were nothing. Because they were nothing. Jack's recklessness mixed with Thane's cold efficiency had been a powerful combination; Shepard would remember it for later, but for now…

The commander was thirsty. Beyond thirsty, actually. She was so parched that when she smacked her lips her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. There was plenty of water and other such sources of hydration available, but the problem was that she didn't want to get up from where she was seated. She scratched her stomach and sighed before finally taking notice of the table in front of her – and then it seemed that this whole dilemma was easily solvable.

There were datapads strewn across the sleek surface along with plates, empty bottles, and the occasional dining utensil. There were also various sheets of paper, important documents that she'd carelessly left to rot beneath the mess she'd slowly acquired. Shepard leaned out of her slouch and investigated the clutter before happening upon a half empty bottle. It was left over protein shake, a milk product, more than likely well on its way to fermentation – she sniffed at the container's contents despite her certainty.

Okay, so, it was probably at least a day or two old, but the smell of it didn't send her lurching as she'd expected for it to. She wasn't a big fan of room temperature milk product, but she was too thirsty to care. She pressed the rim of the bottle to her lips and—

"Do you really feel that you should drink that, Siha?"

She pulled the bottle away and sighed. "Well, I'm pretty fucking thirsty, so yeah."

"You are only a few steps away from a glass full of water."

"So?"

"So, that bottle has been sitting there for four days. For you to drink it would be ill advised."

"No it hasn't. Just two." She knew it wasn't just two. "I would know, I was the one who put it there." She also knew she wasn't the one who'd put it there. She'd left it on the floor by the couch and Thane had picked it up.

This little altercation was insanely domestic.

How…heart warming

"It's as juvenile as it is obstinate for you to question my memory like that despite your knowledge of its perfection."

"I do what I want."

"_Siha_."

She brought the bottle to her lips once more before Thane's hand shot out to touch her shoulder.

"Would you like for me to get it for you?"

"No, this is fine." Her voice had a slight echo effect to it because of the closeness of the bottle to her mouth. It was cool.

"If you consume that, Siha, I will never kiss you again."

"You don't say?" That was definitely a challenge. Shepard shrugged as she tipped the bottle back and chugged down a fair amount of its contents.

Holy fucking shit, she really shouldn't have put that in her mouth.

_Why did she put that in her mouth_.

She hated herself, and though it was _bad_, the commander didn't even so much as flinch as she slammed the bottle back down onto the table – she wouldn't let the drell catch any hint that he'd been right, and that yes, drinking that shit had been a very, very poor decision on her part. In fact, she was even going to rub it in a little, and the victorious grin plastered across her face was the only warning Thane got before she pounced on him.

He struggled under her as the commander straddled his lap, and she managed to glimpse a quick, full view of his face before he got the chance to cover his mouth with his hands: his brows were bowed downward, his lips curled into a slight grimace, and he had a look of panic in his big, black eyes. She couldn't fight the laugh that came barking out of her.

"Come on button eyes, just a _little_ kiss." She pried at his forearms, but to no avail; she couldn't even budge them. "Gah. _Please_?"

"_No_." It came out so muffled it sounded more like 'mngho'.

She dug her knees into the couch as she shifted on top of him, and then leaned down to press her lips to his hand. "If you don't move your hands, I'm going to slobber all over you."

"The lesser of two evils," he muffled so fantastically that she could hardly hear him.

Shepard glared at him and let saliva collect in her mouth as she jabbed him in the sides with her index and middle fingers; he squirmed and his hands loosened from his mouth, a startled gush of air escaping him, which allowed Shepard to tug them away so she could plant a big, sloppy, wet, open-mouthed kiss to his startle-parted lips.

"NnngnGRAHH,"

The kiss tasted like ass, because she'd just drank ass.

The drell struggled half-heartedly beneath her as she dragged her tongue down his chin, the commander sure to be thorough.

"I cannot believe you just did that." He circled an arm around her and he patted her back with one hand as he wiped her contaminated drool from his chin with the other. He wasn't mad. "I think I might...heave."

"Drama queen." She grinned and sat up, the drell steadying her with a hand at her back as well as around her wrist. She shifted off of him as she placed her feet on the ground. "You were right, that was really nasty. I'm gonna go brush my teeth."

She disappeared behind the hissing metallic door of her bathroom, catching the reflection of herself in the mirror. Gross. She turned on the faucet with the swipe of a hand and began to splash water on her face, washing away the begrimed sheen that had dried on her skin. Heat and sweat always felt good until it'd had time to fester, and now she just felt dirty.

There was a hand-towel hanging from a rack to her left and she grabbed it so that she could dry her face. It smelled like nothing (the commander still missed the scent of her earthy laundry soap) and was totally lacking in the plush quality that Shepard believed all towels should have, the thread count making the worthless thing grainy and coarse. It left her face feeling raw and her cheeks bright red, the distinct feeling of disappointment beginning to burble in her stomach, but the hissing of a door opening behind her squelched the sensation entirely. She smiled.

"You wanna brush your teeth too? I have an extra." Instead of waiting for his answer, she dropped her hand-towel and shuffled through a plastic side drawer she'd brought up to her room after the first week she'd moved in. She actually had a lot of multicolored extras, already three of them visible after the brief amount of jumbling through the countless items she'd crammed into the small compartment. She picked out the bright green one, because it reminded her of him. "Here."

He held his hand out and she dropped the object onto his upward facing palm. "This looks…peculiar."

"What, drell don't believe in oral hygiene?"

Thane folded his arms across his chest, the tooth brush lightly fisted in the palm of his hand, and blinked at her.

She blinked back.

Oh, right. He wasn't going to dignify that with a response. Shepard turned away from him and dug around for her tube of toothpaste, and when she found it, she hefted herself up to sit on the small, monochrome sink. She could feel water soaking through her pants.

Goddammit.

"What's so weird about my toothbrush, then?"

"Ours look much different. Wider, lengthier – hardly similar to this."

Shepard opened cap of the tube with her teeth and she reached out to grab the hand that was holding the green toothbrush, squeezing the minty paste onto it with care. "Probably because you have such weird teeth." She reached up and tugged on his lower lip when she was done and released it just as quickly, and he gave her a look as if to say: 'Why would you do that?'

The drell recovered and sniffed at the paste, the emerald hued scales on his forehead gliding downward as he grimaced. "I believe it's the other way around, Siha. Yours are so _tiny_."

"Yeah, whatever – I have more of them, so mine are better," she said as she applied the substance to her own brush.

"That's hardly a convincing argument – I don't know that it is in me to handle this amount of faulty reasoning in the span of a single conversation."

"Dick." She swung her legs and wiped the tooth paste she'd accidentally squeezed onto her fingers on her pants, the minty shit leaving a sticky, white trail. The commander paid this no mind. "I'm serious. If you lost one, you'd be totally fucked."

"On the contrary: drell posses eight more teeth compacted in their jaws for that very reason; were I to lose one, another would eventually form in its place."

"Care to demonstrate?"

"To what end?"

"I'll give you a knuckle sandwich."

"Compelling."

"Your breath smells really bad, Thane."

"I wonder why that would be…"

Shepard shrugged in order to communicate that she was clueless, though she was well aware of what she'd done. She would've laughed if she hadn't have already stuck the toothbrush in her mouth with a 'pop'. She brushed her tongue first, because she was tired of the sour taste of four-day-old milk product. The bristles rubbing against her tongue coupled with the powerful minty flavor of the paste was quick to numb her mouth, and she found that this was much more pleasant than what she'd previously subjected herself to.

Her legs swung back and forth as she brushed her teeth, and she couldn't help but stare at the drell across from her: he looked flabbergasted, and when he stuck his tongue out to briefly taste of the pasty white substance she'd squeezed out onto his toothbrush, she nearly fell off of the sink.

_His face_.

His fucking _face_.

A laughed startled out of her and she quickly put her hand over her mouth in order to avoid spitting all over him.

"This tastes…unpleasant."

"Don't be a pussy," she said from around her toothbrush as she slid off of the sink with fluidity to spit into it. She rinsed her mouth as well as her toothbrush and tossed the thing carelessly back into the drawer. The sink was a mess, with shallow puddles of water marring its surface, as well as the occasional dribble of used toothpaste. That she would clean it up later was a possibility, but _only_ a possibility. "I'll be in the next room doing something lazy if you need me."

Thane hm'd a goodbye at her back as she retreated, the drell left alone to resolve whatever issue he was having with the human brand of dental care. Shepard was glad that their little altercation had occurred – the whole situation had to have been one of the most hilarious things she'd ever experienced. A definite top 5 moment. She slinked over to the couch and climbed onto the back of it before allowing herself to topple over onto the cushions.

Horizontal was Shepard's favorite place to be, whether it be for sleep, relaxation, or…other things. Leather couches, though, were some of her least favorite things – she disliked that she had to wait for the material to warm around her (she shouldn't have to wait), and she disliked being _cold_. Joker had been wrong about the _civilian grade leather_ being a plus.

"I will never understand why humans are so drawn to mint," Thane announced from behind the couch.

"Why do you hate it so much?" Shepard lifted her legs so that the drell could sit down, and he drew them into his lap.

"The flavor is too _strong_." Shepard's feet were bare, and as he continued to speak, he gave the arch of her foot a playful rub with the pad of his thumb. "I dislike how it burns my tongue, Siha."

She prodded his chest with a toe, her gesture just as mischievous as his had been. "You burn my tongue sometimes, but I like it."She paused to lick her lips and she stretched, her body fully elongating. "Feels like cinnamon."

"That sounds like another human spice I would not appreciate."

"Mm, button eyes, come here." She sat up and pulled at his biceps, her legs spread widely so that he could fit comfortably between them. His face was so close to hers, and his elbows dug into the couch on either side of her. "I've got a craving for all sorts of _spices_ you might not like."

"Such curious innuendo."

"Shut your mouth," she said with affection. "Unless you plan on kissing me with it."

The drell obliged, and suddenly the scent of him was everywhere: leather coupled with a crispness that Shepard couldn't describe with mere words. The kiss was oddly cold, the result of the toothpaste's effects on their taste buds, but it packed the punch of newness; the feeling hit Shepard so hard that she could barely contain herself, and it was wonderful.

Shepard slid her tongue along the width of his teeth, the physical action an accepting acknowledgement of their prior conversation, and the silent communication meant to express that she was just as enamored with his differences as she was with his similarities. He responded in kind, the hand that he had placed at her side sneaking up to massage at a breast.

Her hands gripped at the back of his neck, an attempt to pull him closer; the kiss had suddenly become harsh, full of ardor – she moaned into his mouth, and he propped himself up with one elbow in order to trail an idle hand down the expanse of her torso. She wrapped her legs around the back of his hips and rolled into him, testing his boundaries. When he reacted, the motion of his thrust jerky and short, she knew that their make-out session had just been elevated to the next level – and god, she was already getting so _wet_.

"Wait, Thane, can we talk about this?" She pulled away from him abruptly, their kiss parting with a smack, and Thane's hands immediately stopped what they'd been doing (things that were very nice). His gaze was questioning, probing, and his lips were softly pouted, damp from their previous preoccupation. She didn't wait for a reply; she only cupped the sides of his face and ran her thumbs beneath his lower eyelids. "Where is this going? Because every time we do this one of us stops at a certain point and it's giving me a serious case of fucking blue balls."

"I don't think you realize how much of what you say I have to interpret through use of context clues, Siha. _Blue…balls_…I'm having strange assumptions…seeing ghastly things in my mind."

"That so doesn't answer the question."

"Ah, well, perhaps I have an answer for you." He sat up a little more and blinked both sets of eyelids, seeming to ready himself for a lengthy solution to her aching balls. "Out of curiosity, I spent some time researching more…_exploratory_ examples of human/drell relations. There was a lot of full on sex, but I found the act of cunnilingus to be particularly…intriguing."

Cunnilingus.

_Cunnilingus_.

God, that was such an unsexy way of putting it. She wondered what it sounded like in his language and briefly considered asking him if she could turn off her translator while he said it again. And she would have too, if it weren't for—

"I would like to…try that, Siha."

"…Right now?"

"Now seems as good a time as any."

"You want to go down on me?"

"I believe that's what we've established."

Shepard raised her eyebrows, licked her lips, and shrugged before plopping her feet onto the table with a thud, her knees spread out in an exaggerated pose. "Okay, get busy." She unbuttoned her pants for emphasis. "Go downtown."

"I'm not familiar with…"

"Am I supposed to coach you or something?"

He slid off of the couch, momentarily disappearing from Shepard's view before popping up between her legs. She felt kind of dizzy all of a sudden; though the conversation had definitely led up to this point, in between her thighs was somehow the last place she'd been expecting to see him. She brought both hands to her face and slid sweat slicked hair out of her eyes, her lids closing; she didn't know if she could handle this.

She felt a tickle along her side, the only warning she got before the drell tugged her shirt upward. She raised her arms out of reflex more than she thought about it and she stared in disbelieving silence as the drell turned to fold the article of clothing on top of the table where her feet had just been. And…there went her nipples. A chill permeated through her and she crossed her arms in front of her, the action something that was not out of modesty, but rather, _necessity_.

"It's fucking cold in here."

"Indeed."

She couldn't believe he'd just said that with his face in her crotch. She covered her mouth to stifle a hysterical giggle. Her crotch…was in his face. This situation was something that was not computing. Deep, calming breaths – she needed to remember to _breathe_.

"You gonna take my pants off or what?

"Mm, though I would prefer for you to do that."

"You just want me to move my arms so you can stare at my tits."

"You are very insightful. Legs up, Siha."

She scooted down on the cushion before hoisting her legs straight up in the air, a little bend in her knees. She felt his hands wedging between her lower back and the couch before she felt a twinge of _something_ in the pit of her stomach. She needed to see his face. Shepard parted her legs, a 'V' shape forming in the air not much different from a pilates pose. "Hold up. Remember when I tried to take your pants off the first time, and you were all, "No, I'm a drell, I don't believe in underwear"?

"That wasn't quite what I said, Siha, but yes."

"Well, I'm not wearing underwear—"

"—Intriguing—"

"—so this is the real deal. These pants are the final layer of defense between you and my hoo-ha. There's no going back, partner."

Thane made an amused sound in the back of his throat. "Siha, you are—"

"Uncouth, I know," she waved him off and spread her legs impossibly wider. It had just occurred to her that she didn't know how different she was down there from _lady_ drell. She'd dropped the pamphlet Mordin had provided her with after she'd gotten to the part where drell didn't have boobs (a rather shocking revelation).

"So, before you get me out of my pants, I've got a quick question. How different am I down there from what's the norm for you?" She was assuming he already knew, since he'd apparently spent some time perving out on pornography.

"Ah, female drell have fewer…folds, and the most sensitive nerves are internal. The other differences are more obvious, however, such as a lack of hair and a variation in skin tone."

Her hamstrings were beginning to ache, so she bent her knees further and rested her feet against his shoulders.

"Oh, good, so I don't need to explain to you where my clit is?" She'd had that conversation exactly too many times in her life, and out of all of them, Kaidan sprang to mind.

…

Kaidan always came to mind at the worst possible times.

"I believe I've got that covered."

"Mmm, well, you don't _yet_." She waggled her brows at him and pressed down on his shoulders with her feet, trying to get some traction so she could lift her ass off of the couch. Thane took the hint and gripped the waistband of her pants, jerking them down in one fluid motion. Shepard lifted her feet off of his shoulders and somewhere above his head so she could avoid harming him as she kicked the clothing the rest of the way off.

And then, silence.

Shepard fought back an embarrassed groan.

"Well, this is…weird."

Thane grabbed her calves, tugging her even further off of the couch cushions as he slung her legs over his shoulders. "I never imagined I'd say this to you, Siha, but you are thinking far too deeply about this."

"You're in a vulnerable spot here, drell. I could easily squish you between my thighs."

"Your threat sounds more like a reward. Now stop speaking."

"You know, I'm only talking so much because I'm _nervous_."

"I am aware. _Relax_."

"I can't, I don't know what you think." She swallowed and rubbed his forearm with one hand as she pulled at her hair with the other. "What do you think?"

"I appreciate the landscaping." She glared at him, and he amended. "It's…_cute_. You are cute."

"That's…such a weird thing to say about a hoo-h—oohhhh_fuckfuckfuck_." He'd swiped his tongue against her while she was mid-sentence and her hips jerked off of the couch, his hands immediately reaching out to steady her.

"At least I'm not calling it a _whohaw_."

"_Fuck me_ – fuck_ you_. You can't do that while I'm talking and then just stop and—_oh my god, oh, you fucking—ah_." Her back arched off of the couch and she buried her face in her hands, every muscle in her body tensing as he flicked his tongue directly against her. "_God_."

Her swearing was followed by a lot of silence and inaction. The drell's hands were on her stomach and he was drumming his fingers against her, and when he trailed them upward she squirmed and giggled. It tickled. She sighed impatiently and sat up to stare at him, their eyes meeting; she wanted him to get to it.

"For as much as I'm teasing you, Siha, I'm really not certain of how to do this to your…satisfaction."

"I don't know, just…go crazy. Do what you want."

"Is there a certain technique I should employ?"

Wow. _Technique_. She briefly remembered what it had been like to be in this situation, though she realized that she'd probably had it a little easier due to her being a chick and already aware of _things_. She studied his features with a slight, subconscious frown: he looked genuinely confused. It was kind of amusing, really, because she'd never seen him with such a look of discombobulated uncertainty before.

He wanted tips.

She could do tips.

Kind of.

"Well, if you're not sure what to do, you could just trace the alphabet…I mean, variety and…well, but you probably don't know mine and—how about drell letters or whatever?" Her gesticulation (and general awkwardness) was off the charts, _she could feel it_.

"That would be very difficult to trace with my tongue. I believe I can manage a few human alphabets; which one do you prefer?"

"Mm, a cunning linguist." Her stared at her and she blinked. "Never mind, you won't get that. I speak English."

"Ah, I know of that one."

"Awesome. Maybe I'll recognize a few letters."

"If you do, then perhaps I am doing it wrong."

Oh.

Touché, drell assassin.

Touché.

Well, this was really happening. Shepard rested her head against the couch cushion, her upper body entirely flat. Silence was a suffocating presence, the drell perhaps collecting his resolve or mapping out a game plan. Her breathing echoed in her ears and she was so nervous she could hardly think. In fact, she wasn't thinking – there was only emptiness. It seemed that her thoughts had been stunned out of her, because she honestly couldn't believe that she was in this situation.

It was a dream she would soon wake from, and blue balls awaited her future.

Shepard was sure of it, and she continued to think so until she felt the first delicate flick of a tongue followed by scale-roughed hands grasping her hips, things that felt far too real to be fake – she gasped and her stomach hitched under his palms. _This was happening_.

She couldn't help but feel…disbelieving, unsure, embarrassed, _so turned on she could hardly breathe, _andall of these things _confusing_ when experienced in unison_._ She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, her hands still entangled in her short, blonde hair. The couch was beginning to stick to her due to the sweat that had once again begun to make itself at home, and for the first time, she didn't care. She would take this leather couch if it meant she got to keep experiencing…_this_.

The oft, in Shepard's opinion, overconfident drell seemed careful and shy in his actions, his movements having a certain softness about them. He avoided her most sensitive spot in favor of teasing and she wanted to fucking punch him. She hated being teased just as much as she _loved_ it.

The way his tongue felt was interesting – it was bumpier, something which she assumed meant his taste buds were more defined, and despite this it still maintained its softness. There was no blinding pleasure, only a small, persistent one that spoke of a promise for more and caused butterflies to erupt in her stomach. She wanted so much fucking more.

Sweat slicked her forehead and she no longer felt cold, a full-body-flush heating her skin. The foreplay was beginning to make her ache and her breathing came out in puffing gusts; she released the hold she'd been keeping on her hair in favor of trying to alleviate the building, burning pressure that had erupted in her core, only to have her hand smacked away by a green one. She whined and squeezed her thighs around him and he intertwined his fingers with hers in response, as if to say: 'Be patient, Siha.'

The experience was so surreal she felt kind of separated from the situation, and the drell had been right: when he started, _really_ started, she couldn't tell what the fuck kind of letter he was tracing; she only knew it felt _good_.

He felt hot and wet against her, his teasing strokes growing gradually more forceful; he demonstrated a flexibility that her human partners could only hope to one day replicate, and the feel of it had her shouting long, keening moans – things she'd be embarrassed of if she could actually _hear_ them over the thudding sound of her pulse in her ears. His tongue was—

Oh god, his _tongue_.

Each time his tongue stroked her clit directly, her muscles spasmed; she couldn't help but _convulse_ – his foreplay had warmed her up so thoroughly that she was now tightly wound, and each lick brought her closer to a rapid, earth-shattering unfurling. He stroked out some kind of twisty motherfucking letter against her and her whole body arched off of the couch, a crying moan followed by a colorful variety of expletives streaming out of her mouth.

She was so close to her peak, but she needed for it to be _deeper_. Shepard needed to feel Thane inside of her in some capacity in order to complete the experience. The problem was actually expressing this desire, and she opened her mouth many times to start a fully verbalized sentence, only to have it replaced with some kind of mutated version of a moan.

Shepard pulled on one of his wrists with both hands and singled out his fused fingers, placing a kiss to them. She was hardly coherent. She cried out in pleasured frustration, her teeth gritted, before she finally got out the correct vowel combination: "Use these?"

Thane understood, and all thoughts ceased. He inserted his fused fingers inside of her, turning them up toward her belly button and curling them in a 'come hither' gesture; Shepard dug her heels into his back and a shouted cry erupted from her vocal cords – she couldn't function like this. Her stomach was starting to feel all kinds of fucked up, her muscles contracting and bunching, her pleasure building to levels she didn't think she could survive through.

One last thrust and flick of his tongue, and she toppled _hard_. She was feeling so much that at first she _couldn't_ make a sound, though she felt like she was making so much noise that the whole ship would be alerted. All of that build up, all of her restraint and lack of release, had amassed to an orgasm that felt so good that once she broke through her muteness she actually _laughed_, really and truly _laughed_, the jovial sound something that she could not deny, and it was broken up by panting gasps and short, throaty moans.

She collapsed onto her side, the shape of her body curling into something that looked sort of like a sideways "J," the curling tail of the letter something that would have looped around Thane. He still sat between her thighs and her face was next to his; she waited for her breathing to calm a little before she spoke, and he smiled up at her, his cheek pillowed on one of her cream colored thighs.

"Oh my fucking god, Thane, that was _amazing_."

"Maybe one day I'll teach you the drell equivalent."

"The words of a dedicated tutor." She yawned and stretched, her body still trembling from the depth of her release. "Next time, I wanna see if I can guess which letters you're doing."

"Somehow, the prospect of that amuses me."

"Oh, 'G', button eyes, '_G_'!" she mock moaned, and he chuckled against her inner thigh, the breath that puffed out as he did so causing her skin to tingle.

"Yes, that's something like how I imagined it," he mused as he reached up to drag his fingers through the blonde, sweaty mess that was her hair.

She giggled and plucked his hand from her head, winding her fingers around it. "Why do you do that?"

"Ah, do what?"

"That thing, with your pinky."

"I am not aware of a 'thing'."

"It, like…dips out more than the rest. The tip," she grabbed his smallest finger for emphasis and kissed it. "It juts. Like some prissy turian with its chin in the air. Like it's the best finger. You have a very pompous pinky."

"…Siha. I…are you intoxicated?"

"No." That was a lie, she was completely sex drunk.

"Then why are you personifying my pinky?"

"Look at it."

He balled his hand into a fist and tucked the pinky Shepard was examining under his thumb. "Stop staring; you are making it feel ...out of countenance."

"I'll stop making your pinky feel out of countenance when you start letting me make your penis feel out of pants…tenance."

"That was almost clever."

"Fuck you, take off your pants."

He smiled. "Perhaps another day, Siha."

"But why not tonight? I feel guilty not returning the favor."

The drell was silent for a moment, _thoughtful_, and Shepard was just a happy sort of numb.

"Siha, I don't want you to do something like that out of _obligation_ – I would much rather you do such a thing because you _want_ to, and for that reason alone."

"But I do want to. I'm being completely genuine, here."

"There is still a lack of certainty for me."

"You don't trust me, button eyes?"

"I trust that you feel that you've taken something from me that needs to be returned; you haven't, Siha, and it doesn't."

"I…okay."

If Thane needed for them to wait, she would wait, and she wouldn't complain about it. He was such a sweet guy, and not for the first time she wondered what he saw in her. In many ways, she was his complete opposite – loud, unsubtle, brash, no book smarts to speak of, _rude_. She didn't understand it, but she wasn't going to question it; she'd much rather cling to it, and cling to it she did. Shepard hugged him tightly to her and inhaled, his scent making her feel more comforted than anything else was capable.

"Thane?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you."


	6. Still Breathing

I do not own Mass Effect.

* * *

_Thrum._

_ Thrum._

_ Thrum._

There was a _whirring_ in Shepard's ears and a breeze had washed over her, but she didn't feel it; she could only hear it, and despite this lack of being able to _feel_, goose bumps prickled from up through her toes and spread out to tickle at the beginnings of her hairline. A heat that couldn't be calmed smothered her, the gentle wind that she could so thoroughly sense not deigning to provide her with relief. She wanted to sweat, but her body would not allow it. She couldn't move, couldn't feel anything outside of the _sweltering_ that had encompassed her, and she was blind.

_Thrum_.

A steady beat.

_Thrum_.

A sound of familiarity – a sound that the commander had grown _accustomed_ to.

Tha-_thrum_.

And she drifted, because the heat made her feel safe. Shepard did not feel threatened by the lack of control that she had over herself, because there was consistency. Her eyelids fluttered and the land beneath her upper body rose and fell like the rocking of a boat, the echoing of liquid tides rising to crash into solid mass gentling her back into the deep, a deep where there was only—

_ Thump._

_ Thud._

_ Pound._

—the sound of a heart in her ear. _His heart_.

These sounds were a constant that had become a stabilizing presence in Shepard's life. The even intake of breath was white noise, the sheer persistency of it something that she now required for sleep to take hold of her. The shifting again, the unusual rocking, roused her once more – she squeezed her eyes tightly closed and huddled deeper into Thane's arms, her ear pressed against the center of his broad chest. The pleasant quality of his textured skin registered for a moment, but barely, and her fingertips prickled.

_Thrum._

_Thump._

_Thud._

_Pound._

Inhale_._

The sound of that breathing made her feel nostalgic. The hollow, droning whir reminded her of _something_, but her mind fumbled, grasping around for an answer that she was too groggy to happen upon. She was once again momentarily roused from sleep and could feel the slow drag of her eyebrows pinching together, and though she had not opened her eyes, she could tell that at present the drell was sleeping soundly. She inhaled and began to drift, rough outlines of shapes dazzling their ways onto the backs of her eyelids as the faint scent of salt began to permeate her senses.

Grains of sand scraped against the sensitive skin of her knees and sifted through her parted fingers; she could feel the pearly quality of something small, fragile. There was still no sight other than the blaring of shapes outlined in stark white, the forms so underdeveloped that the commander could not identify them. There was weight in the palm of her hand, her freed one lifting so that she could smooth the tips of her fingers over the object. She was met with a bumpy rigidity, the thing covered in angry points, and she was reminded of…

_Seashells_. When she'd held them to her ear, there'd been a steady, ghosting rhythm, one she now found concurrent to the way the drell beneath her breathed; she'd always imagined, fully knowing how childlike this made her, that it had been the sound of waves crashing against land. Though she had since become aware that the sound was produced by the echoing of the ambient noise around her, she still held onto the thought that she'd captured a little piece of the ocean inside of the comparatively tiny shells.

The full resonance of Thane's breathing rekindled the feelings that this phenomena stirred in her, and in the haze of sleep, she childishly clung to the idea that he also had a little piece of the sea within him. It was a thought that made her happy as she weaved in and out of consciousness to the company of the thumps, thuds, and pounds of the body beneath hers.

The boat rocked again – shifted – and Shepard became aware of the cocoon of blankets around her as well as the tiny amount of drool that had pooled under her mouth as a result of the way her lips had been awkwardly pressed against her arm. The sound of her own grumbling was hoarse to her ears and she pinched at Thane's side as if to silently communicate her irritation at having been awakened by his unrest before falling back under once again.

The sound of breath was fascinating, the constant rhythm of the heart even more so. Shepard listened with a kind of intensity to the steady pitter-patter of the thrumming in her ear. Oxygen being dragged in, full, and then being pushed out to make room for hollowness, always expanding and relaxing; it was stable, and so Shepard was stable. She was grounded_._

No, not _grounded_.

Grounded was not the right word.

_Shepard was obsessed._

_Thrum_.

_Thump_.

These were sounds of exponential importance to the commander.

_Thud._

_Pound._

She liked to listen to them because they were essential to _living_.

…

She waited for the inhale to come.

The light breeze was no more, though the heat was just as suffocating as it had always been. The palms of her hands began to sweat and she swallowed, a dry gulp working its way down her throat. All was still and the first bead of sweat began to roll and drip down the slight inward curve of her temple, and still she waited.

There was calm where there shouldn't have been.

Shepard missed her seashell.

An unfamiliar bustling – like thunder – disrupted the quiet that had persisted despite Shepard's impatience. It was angry, imposing – it was _unwelcome_. The whirring had suddenly intensified, and she could see again, her eyes filling with the view of wrinkled white sheets and the green of an arm. There shouldn't have been wheezing. There shouldn't have been pained gasps, lungs tugging for air they could not find. She shouldn't have startled awake to the sound of coughing, to miserable little intakes of breath – but she had.

And she didn't know what to do.

This was how she'd found herself huddled with the drell on the bathroom floor, the pallid fluorescent lighting blaring against the natural iridescence of Thane's scales as well as the sweaty sheen of moisture that had developed on Shepard's skin. She squatted in front of him, her knees planting on the slick metallic tile; a shiver rushed through her from the impact of the chill floor on her skin and she reached out, her fingers widely splayed, to frame sides of his face as if maybe her touch could quell the frantic breathing.

As soon as she established contact with the drell, eyes that had been squeezed tightly shut squinted open and sought out hers. Shepard frowned, the look he'd given her radiating every ounce of his shame and frustration; this wasn't something that he'd ever intended for her witness. Time seemed to slow as panic burned like acidic bile in the pit of her stomach even though she knew only a few seconds had passed from the time she'd awakened to the time she'd managed to get him to the bathroom.

She jerked away from him and began to dig through her cabinets, catching her hip against the corner of the countertop hard enough to make her see spots. She ignored this and continued to dig, cups and bottles skittering off of the sink to topple into a pile on the floor. She caught sight of the object in which she'd been searching for and grasped it, a sense of elation filling her.

She turned to face him and the sight of him made her face crumple, the image of the drell before her enough to remind her that this wasn't an asthma attack and he wasn't a human. No, how silly of her. How _fucking stupid_. An inhaler wouldn't work – aerosol spray was composed of liquid particles. _Moisture_. She shouted in frustration and slung the medicine at the sink, the plastic casing of the bottle cracking and bursting upon impact as it ricocheted off of the counter and onto the floor.

Shepard thought hard, pacing. She gripped her hair in her hands and pulled.

Moving him had likely been a mistake, the energy it had taken for him to walk requiring more oxygen than if she'd just left him where he'd been. She was so distraught that she couldn't think clearly, she just wanted to keep him in sight because she didn't know what to do, or say, or think, or feel. She couldn't stop being reminded of how not getting enough air to breathe felt like and the need to vomit built in the back of her throat.

Her silent breathing was an odious contrast to the sounds of his struggle. She calmed herself, and understood that more than anything right now, he needed to be comforted. Seeing her freaking out like this was just going to fuck him up more. She took a deep breath and turned around, dropping to sit in front of him. He needed someone. She needed to stop thinking about herself, about how she felt. How he felt was more important right now.

She stared at the ceiling and counted to five, the bathroom far more imposing than it normatively was. It had the same dreary quality as the rest of the ship, except it was smaller and far less open – metal bulkheads surrounded them, every surface reflective. She stared up at herself, her image twisted and distorted. The gasps had grown a little hoarser, and she fought to regain control over the contorting muscles in her face.

She steeled herself to look at him, and set her expression in a soft smile.

A _see-through_ smile.

He looked like he was trying, too. To make everything look like it was okay, or at least like it was better than what it was. He sat hunched over and clasped at his own hands, and despite the quickness with which his chest rose and fell, he seemed calm. She reached out to him and pushed at his shoulders, the shaky smile she'd employed wavering. "Here, straighten up. It'll make it easier for your diaphragm to contract." She cleared her throat, hesitating. "If this doesn't stop within the next thirty seconds, I'm giving Chakwas a call. I really don't give a fuck if you want to see her or not."

There was silence, and it was because she knew he knew better than to try to speak. It would be a waste of breath. Of oxygen.

"I'd offer you a glass of water if I didn't think that'd be a really stupid fucking idea."

He shook his head in the negative and flattened his legs against the floor before he reached out to grasp her hand. He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall, seeming to focus entirely on regaining control of his lungs. Shepard wanted more than anything to be able to help, but instead, she sat in silence, staring at him.

Fifteen seconds.

His breathing was still abnormal, but it had slowed. The puffing continued, but in a manner that was far less harsh – he was getting better. She noticed that his exhales were deeper than his inhales, a trick that she'd learned provided for maximum ventilation, and something that also told her that this was a thing that wasn't new to him. This wasn't the first time that this had happened.

She knew that efficient exhalation minimized CO2 levels, though those inexperienced with being in a situation where a shortness of breath would occur generally tried to inhale before they were finished fully exhaling. Panic made them want to draw air in faster than they could expel it, causing their episodes to last longer than they otherwise would have. This had happened to her many times in her life before she'd learned to control it.

Thirty-two seconds.

She moved to leave, but he tugged on her and stroked his thumb over the back of her hand; she squeezed his in response. The coughing had finally stopped, and the panting rasps were becoming more under his control – the struggle for oxygen was still there, but it wasn't as scary. A few more seconds passed and he was virtually normal, and although she was sure he was capable of speaking again, he said nothing.

He shivered and a genuine smile, although subdued, lit up Shepard's features. "There's no way you're cold. It's a fucking oven in here." She'd adjusted the temperature in her cabin to suit him without saying anything about it – Shepard had never minded heat. She wasn't sure if he'd even noticed, but he was clever as fuck, so it wouldn't surprise her if he at least had suspected; a lot of things went unspoken between them, this being one of the many.

"…Shock." He looked like he was about to say something else, but rasped instead – Thane covered his mouth with the hand that was not around her own and coughed.

It was emotional shock – not the physical kind. She knew that. He was bodily cold, but there was also an unpleasant chill that wasn't entirely physical, a chill that was soul deep and crushing. She grabbed his other hand and stood, tugging him up along with her. The bathroom door hissed open as she led them toward her bed, the unpleasant metal grating of the floor digging into the bare bottoms of her feet with each step.

There were a lot of things she wanted to ask him – a lot of things she wanted to say. She felt like ripping into him; she _wanted_ to be angry. Most of all, she wanted to talk about the _thing_ that they were most unlikely to talk about. She wanted to _understand_. But she knew that it'd take a little give first. She needed to open up more in order to get him warmed up to talking. As dense as she was when dealing with other people, when dealing with _emotions_, even she knew that.

She just felt…she didn't know how she felt. Shepard had never hidden what was happening to him from herself, she'd just never been so confronted by it. There was something about it that was numbing – disappointing, maybe. Irrationally, she felt a little mocked by it, like it'd happened just to remind her that she really wasn't in control of anything and that some things just went beyond her range.

She hadn't thought that she'd been anything other than realistic about their situation, but a bit of hope had been killed in that little minute and a half that his illness had been exposed, truly and thoroughly for what it was. That spoke levels to the commander, the fact that there had been a feeling of hope to quash at all. In the future, she would very much not be okay.

This wasn't about her, though. How she felt about this didn't matter. She could take how she felt right now and multiply it by ten and she knew that it wouldn't even amount to a fraction of what Thane was experiencing and had been experiencing for months. She didn't matter for shit in this equation, and she wasn't about to pretend or fool herself into thinking any differently.

She sat down on the foot of the bed and the mattress gave under her weight, the fact that she had made it do so a strange sort of comfort to her. The astronomical thread count of the sheets made sitting unreasonably relaxing, which caused her to slouch. Any alertness she'd had before from when she'd been startled awake disappeared and all she felt now was sleepy. Thane stood in front of her, his arms crossed and face expressionless; under lighter circumstances, she'd have told him that he was poker facing again.

She pulled the shorts she'd been sleeping in a little further down her upper thigh and ran her tongue over her teeth; she then shifted her gaze from a tiny, imperfect spot on the floor to Thane's eyes and took a deep breath. "I had asthma when I was little. Most Earth kids do, it's just that usually people can afford corrective surgery. Not the poor ones, though. I lived with it until I was accepted for N7 training."

For a fraction of a second, his eyebrows rose. He had likely been expecting rudeness, or a little more of her regularly scheduled irrationality. But she didn't work that way. A few long seconds had passed before he responded. "Asthma? I am unfamiliar with that term."

"It's a condition that causes the airways to sometimes inflame and constrict. It's chronic, unless you can afford to cure it – I had type two, which just means normally I was fine, just certain things would cause it to flare up and I'd have really severe attacks. Kind of like what you just went through, which is why I'm telling you about this." She sighed and shifted on the bed, the sheets ruffling under her fingertips. "Would you sit the fuck down, please? You're making me nervous, hovering like that."

"I…" He nodded and complied, sitting close enough to her that their thighs and the sides of their feet touched. It didn't take long for his hand to find hers, the contact something that she'd come to believe was of profound importance to him. "I am sorry that you've ever had to experience anything even remotely akin to that."

Shepard leaned against his shoulder and shrugged, her fingers clenching and unclenching around his. "The worst attack I ever had was when I was sixteen. I got mad at the person I was living with and just kind of took off. A lot of things can set off an asthma attack – allergens, anxiety, smoke, cold air – and that day had been the coldest I've ever remembered it being.

"I wasn't used to the cold. Where I lived, it got _really_ frosty maybe one or two months out of the year. I was also panicked – I'd convinced myself that I was going to leave forever and I'd known this guy my whole life. Add to that the fact that I was kind of a chain smoker at the time and you end up with a pretty pro recipe for disaster."

She opened her mouth to continue, but the drell interrupted her. "I apologize for stopping you, but isn't this even more reason for you not to smoke now, Siha?"

She shrugged. He had no _idea_. "I'm a robot, remember? That shit is far from mattering anymore. _Anyway_," she started quickly before he got the chance to reply. "The attack was so bad I thought my chest was caving in. I'd been running like a fucking idiot and it just hit me, and I had to sit down in the snow. It'd eventually gotten so bad that my lips were turning blue. One of my lungs collapsed and if some stranger hadn't have found me and gotten me emergency care, I would have died."

For a time, there was no response. Thane's expression was intense, but she couldn't read it. Instead of trying, she looked down and played at the hem of her shirt.

"Thank you for sharing this with me. To know that you have experienced something similar, while unfortunate, is of great…comfort."

She'd told him because she didn't want him to feel alone. She always had after things like that. That, and she also wanted him to talk. Shepard really couldn't do anything without having an ulterior motive; she wasn't entirely sure whether or not that was a detestable quality, but then, she didn't really care, either.

"Yeah, don't mention it." She frowned and scratched her forehead, continuing along another line of thought – admitting something personal. "It's kind of weird, but I've always kept an inhaler since. Like, I don't even need it anymore, but I keep one in the bathroom. How fucked up is that?"

"It isn't, Siha." They sat in absolute silence for a moment, their breaths not even audible. "Is that what you threw earlier, an 'inhaler'?"

"Yeah. It wouldn't have helped you, but it had just been my first thought. It would have been like me turning on the shower during the whole episode and letting the room steam up, because the medicine is aerosol."

Shepard finally felt a little chilled, her tank top and shorts not providing her skin with enough cover, and remembered that the initial reason she'd led them out of the bathroom was so that she could get Thane warmed up. The bare-chested drell hadn't even made a move for the black blanket covering the bed, the thing something he commonly hogged. It was the first thing he always went for when it was time for bed. Shepard had always come second to the cotton motherfucker, and because of this, it had always been a point of contention between them.

The fact that he wasn't snuggled up with it right now was not a great sign.

The commander let go of the drell's hand and then twisted and stretched, her fingers grasping for the corner of the comforter and tugging it back. She pulled until the other corner was within her reach as well and peeled the blanket toward her, Shepard curling back up into her previous position as she cocooned it around herself. The blanket had dipped over her head and she gave the drell a look, her lower lip pouting.

She wasn't going to offer, she was going to make him ask.

They sat there for moments, at an impasse of some sort, before Thane gave in and pulled a little at the blanket. She frowned and pulled back. He pulled at it again, with a little more strength than he had before, and she pulled back harder. He did it once more, with the same result, and huffed noisily.

"_Shepard_."

Ohohoho, he was whipping out the last name. She fought back a grin.

"What?" She noticed that his body language was playful, a nice upgrade from how reserved he'd been only minutes before.

"Siha, you know how I feel about this blanket."

"Yeah, but do you know how the blanket feels about me? _The_ _Blanket_ likes me better than he likes you."

"I am…hurt."

"It's true though. If you want The Blanket, you're going to have to fight me for him. You're going to have to _woo_ him."

"Is that so?"

"_Yes_."

Thane smirked and placed a hand onto the bed and behind his back, the other working up to rub a delicate caress over the part of the blanket that was draped over her arm. He leaned forward and smoothed the side of his face against it and she could feel the rigid edges of his frill through the thick cotton; she closed her eyes and groaned a little in mock ecstasy. "Mmm, The Blanket likes that."

"Does he, now?" She'd heard the click while he'd said it and knew what was coming next without even having to _think_. The remote to their stereo system had been left on their bed, and she now knew that it had conveniently been placed next to the drell. Mood music began to stream from the radio and her stomach flipped – she laughed so hard that she _barked_. _She was gonna die_. She fell backward onto the bed, fully lying down, and the blanket puffed up around her.

He didn't rip it out from under her like she'd expected for him to, he just kind of crawled into it with her and wrapped it around them, its size large enough that it could cover his back completely even though she was lying on top of it. She couldn't stop laughing – the music was just so _ridiculous_. She was so gone that she didn't even immediately notice that Thane was on top of her, his face buried in her neck.

Her laughter turned into a gasp when he kissed her throat and sucked. He'd recently discovered the wonders of _hickeys_, of all things, and had developed a fondness for placing them on discrete areas of her body. Her neck was not one of those places. She grasped his cheeks with her hands and gave his face a gentle tug upward, more a hint than her actually forcing him to move.

His lips found hers and she ran her hands down the frilled skin lining his cheeks to the back of his neck; his tongue parted her mouth and instead of being turned on, Shepard was suddenly hyperaware of the background music.

_Fuck_.

The beat was cheesy – it honest to god sounded like something that belonged in a cheap porno movie. She laughed into his mouth on accident and he pulled back, a laugh startled out of his lips as well, and she hid her face in her hands.

"_God_, turn that shit off!"

"As you wish." It had taken a little digging, but within moments, the horrible music had stopped and Thane's reign of terror was over. "I take it I was successful in wooing The Blanket? He seems to have warmed up to me."

He'd settled back in between her legs and Shepard squeezed her thighs against him. "Yes, he is most definitely very happy with you right now."

"Excellent. I am lacking the energy required for further wooing."

Shepard didn't reply; instead she wound her arms around his back, the texture of his skin something that always fascinated her. Simply _touching_ him was rewarding, and her fingertips tingled contentedly. His chin was pillowed on her breast and his eyes had closed, and before long, his breathing had begun to even out as well. Her hands had traveled farther up his back and had eventually stopped to rest at the crown of his head – she cradled him against her and sighed.

She wasn't ready for this conversation, but they had to talk about it. They couldn't just ignore these things anymore. It only helped her that he was drowsy and once again in a good mood. It was out of reluctance that she broke the silence, her voice a tentative whisper.

"Can I ask you something?"

He made a little noise in the back of his throat and snuggled a little deeper against her; he stroked his hand against her side, and these little attentions made up for the fact that he took his time to verbally respond to her. "Yes?"

"How often does that happen to you, Thane? The breathing thing."

And she watched as his eyes slowly opened. She had his attention as well as his cooperation.

"Ah…episodes like that are fairly infrequent. This was the first one in weeks."

"You've been hiding it from me." It wasn't a question or an accusation. It was a statement – a simple truth.

"No. I've not felt the need to bring it up in conversation."

"Because you didn't want me to know."

"No, because it's unimportant, Siha. For me to have discussed it with you would have caused you unnecessary worry. You have more than enough problems to be concerned with; my condition should not be one of them. These episodes are not yet crippling – my life is not threatened. I have experienced this for months now and I have acclimated."

That this was _normal_ was not comforting. She felt like she had something stuck in her throat. She kept swallowing, but it didn't help to relieve the choking sensation she was suddenly experiencing. She had to remind herself that Thane didn't owe her anything. He wasn't obligated to give her any of the details to something so deeply personal, no matter how close they were.

He was right.

It was his struggle, and his alone.

"Does it always hurt for you to breathe?" This was something she'd always wondered. If she'd asked him how he'd felt, he'd never given her a straight forward answer. She had suspicions that he didn't always feel the best, and though she was asking for confirmation, she wasn't really sure she wanted to hear the answer.

"Often, I am uncomfortable. I won't admit to experiencing pain – I am far too accustomed to the feeling to be able to say that it's painful. My chest still aches from my struggle tonight, but I will be well within the morning."

That was…not as bad of an answer as she was expecting. It was a lot more honest, too. She hugged him close to her and kissed his forehead, the weight of him on top of her a quiet comfort. She wanted to ask if it were possible for a breathing attack to happen while on a mission, but she wouldn't do that to him. She wouldn't make him talk about it. His pride was so immense that it wasn't something that she'd ever try to consciously undermine. They would deal with it if it happened.

He needed a little more give.

"You know, I died of asphyxiation."

"I am…aware." He shifted on top of her and she could sense that the topic was making him uncomfortable. "What was it like, Siha?"

"Suffocating, or being dead?"

"Both."

"Empty. I mean, there was nothing there. There was nothing."

"What of an afterlife?"

"Nada…I mean, I probably wouldn't remember if there was one. There's just this…gap. There's a gap. One minute, I was suffocating, and the next, I woke up on an operating table. Two whole years, just missing. I can't explain…I can't explain what that feels like."

"I wouldn't expect for you to be able to. I cannot even fathom it." The way they were laying, he couldn't reach her hair to stroke it as he usually did, but his fingers still found the little strands that were just long enough to touch the tops of her shoulders. "Were you afraid?"

She was quiet, and the drell allowed her to think. She'd never spoken out loud about any of this, so finding a way to voice it was a process that was _complicated_. "Yes. It hurt. It hurt really bad. And I'd never felt so helpless. I knew that I was going to die, and all that was left for me was a struggle – a really futile fucking struggle. But when it was happening, all I could think was, 'oh my god, I actually feel human again – _I feel_ _human_.'

It was so…it was _rewarding_. I'd always felt like my humanity was something that I had just willingly given away without even thinking about it. I was just a bunch of spare parts – a super soldier. And in the end, I was reunited with it – with my humanity. I had found something authentic."

She felt weird for confessing it – for saying that it had felt good to die. It fucked with her now, and she was terrified of the reality that she _would_ die again, but when it had happened, it had given her something that she had thought she'd lost forever.

"I am…I am not ready to face that, Siha. I'm not prepared."

"Are you afraid?" She turned the question around on him.

"I'm…not certain. I fear that I'm not strong enough. I am not as strong as you are."

It didn't take a strong person to die. _Weak_ people died. She didn't want to get into a discussion with him, so she didn't say it – but she certainly believed it.

"Life has been really unfair to us, Thane."

"Life is rarely fair to anyone."

A fair point, but she couldn't accept it. She couldn't _live_ with that. She tilted his chin up with her index finger so that they could make eye contact – so that he could see the ferocity in her expression. "We'll show life, Thane. We'll show it what we're fucking made of."

"I believe one of us already has."

"You will, too. We won't go out like flames. I won't die thirsting for oxygen again, and you never will. I promise – we'll go out in a fucking _blaze_. Whether it happens at the Collector base or in some shitty back alley of Omega, we'll die in battle together. We _have_ to – it's the only way that's worthy of _us_."

He placed a kiss to her collarbone and took a deep breath against her. "That is a finer death than I could ever hope for, Siha."

Silence again. She was tired of talking about this. She wanted something else. She wanted to _breathe_ again. _Inhale, exhale, Shepard – keep breathing_. Keep breathing. That's what she wanted to do.

"Hey, listen…this is gonna sound weird, but I want to try something. If it makes you uncomfortable, just tell me to stop." She didn't wait for the nod that she knew was coming and pushed at his shoulders. She wobbled around on the mattress and then flipped their positions so that she could sit on top of him, her knees situated on either side of his hips. "Just, part your lips and sync your breathing to mine. When I breathe out, you breathe in."

"Siha—"

"Sh." She leaned over him, her hands in the blanket on either side of his neck, and the tips of their noses touched. She listened to his pattern closely, and in a manner of seconds, she was inhaling every time he exhaled. She leaned over him even farther, this time her forehead touching his, and closed her eyes. "When I kiss you, keep breathing through your mouth. Let me feel you breathe."

If he'd had something he'd wanted to say, she didn't give him the chance – her lips covered his in an open mouthed kiss. Their lips were barely touching, and as he exhaled, she breathed in. She immediately felt lightheaded and an emotion so strong that it made her tear ducts sting overwhelmed her. She couldn't name it, but she kind of felt so _fulfilled_ that she wanted to puke. She just had this perverse need to feel it, to inhale what he'd inhaled. She couldn't explain it, she just _needed_ it. She needed him. She needed his air, and she needed to give him hers. She needed this so that she could feel _okay_ again.

The two of them had issues with breathing; that was what this was about. They both knew what it was like to suffocate, what it was like to not be in control of one of the most basic, subconscious bodily functions – and to not be able to breathe was traumatizing. It required a certain level of trust to depend on your partner for the air that you breathed, and that he could trust her with this spoke more to her more than his words ever could.

It had been two months ago that she had learned that the trick was to keep breathing. Life was all in the lungs, and inhalation was key. Breathing was key. She needed to hear it, to be reminded of it, because she would go mad without it. Shepard did not go a second without telling herself to inhale – to breathe. Every intake, every exhale, she was _conscious_ of, because _she had to be in control of it_. She had lost control once, and she was afraid.

She was afraid of forgetting to tell herself to breathe. She was terrified of not being able to do this simple, most fundamental act any longer. But if Shepard remained in _control_, this would never happen, and she promised to herself that she always would be. She would _never _lose control again, because she reminded herself. _Breathe, Shepard_: every second of every day of every week of every month of every year. _Breathe_.

This was why all of those weeks ago she had been afraid of sleep. The lack of control over her mind and body had disturbed her, even more so the thought of losing her mantra. _She_ was lost without her mantra. But she had this new mantra now, these new sounds – a new way of communication. _Thud, thud, thud_. Inhale. Even when she was sleeping, the sound of Thane's life reminded her to breathe in, breathe out. Even _now_.

She was safe for as long as that sound continued.

She'd never felt more connected to another person; each successful breath made her feel more confident that she could survive – that maybe _he_ could survive. It was a dangerous feeling, but she didn't care anymore; death was inevitable, but right now, she didn't have to concern herself with it. Her thoughts mirrored Thane's words – she had more important things to concern herself with, because...

Shepard was still breathing.

_Thrum._

_ Thump._

_ Thud._

_ Pound._

Inhale.

_They_ were still breathing.


	7. Interlude: Another Version of the Truth

I don't own Mass Effect.

* * *

Interlude:  
_Another Version of the Truth_

The Destroyer

* * *

_Shepard didn't know what she was doing here_.

The air was thick with humidity and reeked of bloodshed and with every staggering breath that she took, the throbbing pain in her lip intensified. An entire cheek had darkened with bruise and dried blood caught at the corner of her mouth, and she wondered for the first time if she'd need stitches after all of this was said and done.

The floor beneath Shepard's boots was metallic, painted white and rusted; an awning ran over their heads, and the commander was grateful for this, because it shielded her eyes from the blaze of the planet's sun. Dirt was loose in the air and the environment was stuffy; she could smell salt and iron on the wind. Breathing was difficult, the oxygen levels not quite what she was used to (and she was certain that the height of the structure they had secured didn't help this) – but she was thankful that she hadn't had to stuff her head in a helmet.

An itch fired its way up the commander's back and she found it impossible to think about anything other than the hands that had been all over her the night before. She had been dealing with it the entire mission, the times when it would flare up and cause her to twitch completely inconsistent; it was a passing burn, but every time it came back, it _raged_.

Shepard wouldn't allow it to affect her performance on this mission, and as the rash bit at her skin, she gritted her teeth. Sweat poured down her face and back in rivulets, irritating both her rash and the fresh cuts that marred her flesh. She steadied her rifle against rusted white railing and pulled back from the scope, taking the moment to puff off of the cigarette that had previously been dangling from her mouth. A new enemy hadn't revealed themselves in the past fifteen minutes, and while Shepard wasn't exactly comfortable, in this moment, she definitely appreciated being alive.

The crude building they'd gained control over had ended up making an excellent bird's nest, which had thus far allowed the woman to pick them off, one by one. Commander Shepard took comfort in the location of her comrades behind her; they were to guard the door in case any of the little fuckers actually made it that far. She tossed her cigarette and bit back a grin with a grimace – the bleeding had just stopped, and she had no interest in splitting her lip further.

The path to this building was vast, empty space, and if any of the mercs wanted to get to them, they had to cross it first. The only problem was that this applied to Shepard as well: it was unlikely that they'd be able to move from this spot easily. The enemy compound comprised of five other buildings that needed to be secured, all of them stark white and flat. The plant life on this planet was sparse, and the ground below was arid and tan. Dust blew in the wind, and Commander Shepard waited.

She checked her life scans again; there were roughly over two hundred enemies left, and considering where the number had been, she and her team weren't faring too bad. Shepard could manage picking a few more off from this position for a little while – but eventually, they'd need to move. The commander wasn't looking forward to it.

Shepard's knees popped and her thighs burned as she shifted from her stoop to a crouch, readjusting the sniper rifle that she'd slung over her shoulder nearly an hour ago. Jacob made a derisive comment to the right of her, and to her left, Miranda snorted; as it turned out, for this part of the mission, the both of them were pretty fucking useless when it came to things other than being a pain in her ass.

Shepard wiggled her toes to make certain that she really couldn't feel them before tossing out a comment that was equally as derisive, earning another snort from Miranda.

Their situation was pretty fucking fantastic.

The mission had been simple enough: invade merc base, clear out merc base, take anything of use and destroy the rest. It was run of the mill, just another simple mission amongst the _many_. Except somewhere along the line, things had gotten fucked up. The three of them had made their way to the base, their intent to infiltrate this building first – and they'd tripped an alarm in the process.

Jacob had failed to breech the locks without alerting enemy combatants.

Miranda's intel had been wrong.

_Shepard was lost in her own head_.

A lot of things had gone wrong, and Shepard was the only one who wasn't pointing fingers. Miranda and Jacob had been at each other's necks the moment shit had gone bad, and as entertaining as it had been at first, the commander found more and more that she couldn't _tolerate_ it – at least, not for much longer. Placing blame wasn't going to do anything other than cause more mistakes. Jacob grunted another complaint, to which Shepard promptly ordered him to shut the fuck up.

Shepard understood their hostility; inwardly, she was as frustrated as they were.

This was supposed to have been a _small_ base – fifteen to twenty-five mercs _tops_. The objective had been to break up an illegal weapons trade that had apparently made itself problematic, but Shepard got the feeling that they'd stumbled onto something much _larger_. There had been at least four hundred of the little bastards, and although they'd successfully secured this structure, they were pinned down and starved for _answers_.

Although Shepard was distant and her mind was scattered, she was far from blaming herself for the situation that they were in; Commander Shepard was well aware that her focus was shot to hell, but she'd had the foresight to bring Miranda Lawson along, because the operative was _supposed_ to have known everything that Shepard didn't care to know. Shepard had stopped reading the datapads on missions like these a long time ago – because it was all the same anyway.

Commander Shepard was always being pointed into a certain direction and told to shoot.

And all of it had become so _inane_.

And everything so _monotonous_.

_Save this person, get that data, blow up that ship, save these goods, disable that bomb, deliver this package, destroy that package, save a hostage, kill a hostage, investigate these mercenar—_

Another merc wandered into view and his form bounced about as the commander's scope hovered – the trigger was pulled without hesitation and her shoulder jerked as the rifle pulsed for yet another time, as yet another faceless person's existence was obliterated by the miniscule movement of her index finger.

Shepard's scream of agony had been delayed because she'd bit it back for a moment, the sound initially covered up by an expulsion of air. She gritted her teeth and swallowed it down, her eyes rolling as Jacob's voice once again sounded from behind her.

"That's _nature_ telling you not to do stupid shit, Commander."

"Tacking on 'Commander' at the end of your statement doesn't make what you said any less _disrespectful_, Jacob," Miranda answered. "We're on a mission – _act_ like it."

Shepard's chest swelled at Miranda's immediate defense of her – but Jacob kind of had a point.

Shepard had broken three of the four fingers that it had taken to make a fist on a vanguard's helmeted face; on the first strike, the ceramic plating of her gauntlet had shattered, and though she had known that the protective material beneath would not be enough to shield her bone from the repeated impact, she'd kept going until she couldn't feel _bone_ at all – kept going because it had _felt_ right.

_And now_…

Whatever, she'd broken her fingers before – her fist curled around her rifle regardless. Spots encompassed her vision and she fired at nothing.

"Regardless, and with all due respect – I still don't understand why you didn't use biotics, Commander," Miranda said as Shepard fired off another round, this time catching a merc in the forehead. "You would have taken out that mercenary unscathed."

"It doesn't matter now. We all know that my impulsiveness often leads to stupidity and…" She fired again, a grunt this time the only indication of the pain that she felt with every tightening of her grip. At least her index finger hadn't been broken. "And I can't take it back."

Shepard only used biotics when she _had_ to. The commander liked being near to her enemy – she liked how powerful it made her feel and she liked having the upper hand despite her _fragility_. Doing otherwise felt a little like cheating, and although she wasn't opposed to it, she liked doing things the _hard_ way.

…No, that wasn't true.

Commander Shepard frowned to herself, her lip once again igniting as sharp throbs pounded away at torn flesh. A stray hair tickled at her nose, and though she longed to brush it away from her face, she ignored it in favor of keeping her rifle steady. A wave of self-loathing blanketed over the commander and she gritted her teeth. Even she was starting to buy into her own _bullshit_.

_It's just that…_

Biotics were far from being second nature to the commander. Shepard's instinct said to punch, not to utilize her control over energy that she hadn't even realized she'd had until she was a weepy eighteen year old cracking under the intensity of her training – the training that had _made_ biotics her reflex impulse for the better part of her military career.

Until she'd died, of course.

And now her reflexes weren't so sharp, and her control wasn't so steady, and sometimes her biotics went a little overboard, and sometimes they fizzled, because…

_They didn't feel the same_.

Because Commander Shepard was not the same person she used to be.

Yes – that was it.

The Savior of the Citadel was having an identity crisis.

Shepard was far too proud to admit to any of it; she couldn't face the fact that her combat abilities had suffered. All of her training was wasted, and she felt lucky to even _know_ how to shoot a gun. The commander would never understand it, and she'd likely never confess to it openly – but she was not the soldier she used to be, and it killed her. She put on a real tough act, but she didn't want to confess to anyone that she was…incapable.

Commander Shepard didn't want to believe that Project Lazarus had failed – she wanted to be _alive_. But she wasn't now, and she never would be again. Thane had been a good distraction, and for a short time, he'd staved off the creeping feeling that Shepard was not the same Shepard that she had been. But the more he'd idolized her, put her on a fucking pedestal, spoken of her as if she were an angel doing the bidding of a God – the more she felt her cracks begin to show.

Eventually, somebody was gonna figure it out.

Another merc bounced about in the focus of her scope, and bemusedly, Shepard took note of how the humanoid creature aimed at her. This one had been the first to show any indication of being _aware_ of where the sniping was coming from.

Shepard let him aim for a little longer, and a bullet clinked off of the railing a few inches to her right.

In Thane's eyes, Shepard was…

_A tenacious—_

Shepard squeezed the trigger and a body was left behind.

—_protector. _

Shepard pulled away from the scope once more and brushed bangs from her eyes, taking a second to shift her position. She looked over a shoulder, gaining the eye contact of Miranda and Jacob, and licked at the warmth of blood that had once again began to ooze from the wound on her lower lip. "I've only got about fifteen clips left."

"Oh, that's bloody _great_."

"I take it you wanna head out after this?" Jacob said; he hunkered down even lower than he had been as a stray slug fired passed him.

_In Thane's eyes she was…_

"Yeah. We search the building before we go." Shepard peered back into her scope. In the time that it had taken for her to look back at her squad, six mercs had poured out of one of the bunkers. They ran in opposite directions, some headed toward the secured position, others toward the southern bunker. All of them sprayed fire. Shepard smirked before she downed two of them – at least they were finally showing some semblance of _strategy_.

It was hopeless, though – even if Shepard were a novice sniper and the ones headed her way _did_ manage to make it across the field, breech the locks Jacob had set into place, and make it into the building, all of them would be dead before they were even able to reach the staircase.

_A warrior-angel of the Goddess Arashu._

_Fierce in—_

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

And the more she thought about it, the more it _pissed her off_.

Who were any of them to say who was worthy of protecting, worthy of killing, worthy of sparing—

Bang.

_The more none of it made sense_.

Commander Shepard killed arbitrarily. She had no moral code that dictated who she spared or killed – her emotions would not allow it. Shepard granted no fairness, no justice – if it felt right, she did it. And the commander didn't know why. She could find no source for the feeling; if asked to justify a kill, she would never be able to do it. Some things felt good, some things felt bad – that was the extent of it. Commander Shepard had found herself unable to process beyond that, because the reasoning got convoluted; you either followed a strict moral code and found some kind of justification for your actions, or you didn't. And Shepard was one of those who didn't.

Shepard had shot a hundred traitors, and yet she'd felt compelled to tell Miranda to spare Niket – _Niket_, the man who had been willing to hand Oriana over to a mad man on the basis of familial ties despite everything he had known of Miranda's father. Shepard had never hesitated to kill a traitor before, and yet with Mordin, she had done so again – she had prevented the doctor from killing Maelon. Allowing either of them to do so wouldn't have _felt_ right. Killing Niket and Maelon wouldn't have been _acceptable, _where countless other times, such actions would have been.

Commander Shepard couldn't resolve the difference in her head – why killing one traitor while sparing another was perfectly acceptable behavior. The lines were blurry; she knew that the black and white of morality wouldn't allow for this kind of hypocrisy. The commander routinely killed without second thought, the list of people she'd allowed to survive much smaller than that of the people she had killed. And still, Shepard was heralded as a savior – as a protector.

But these mercs, these people who were guilty of _guarding_, of being paid to _protect – _killing them was acceptable. They did as Shepard did, although Shepard was not always certain of what it was that she was protecting. The commander was also certain that many of these specific mercs had never killed a day in their lives (this situation was evidence enough to the commander that these mercs were fresh from the fucking farm), although they certainly didn't lack for trying once she had forced her way into the picture.

Truthfully, their only mistake was _being in the way_.

They had no identity.

They had no face.

They were nameless.

They were peons.

They were just another kill under Shepard's belt.

_More blood on my hands_.

And no one who mattered gave a damn about them.

Shepard's actions were no more worthy of praise than that of a hired gun.

Another merc bounded across the field before halting; he stopped behind one of the few areas of cover, seemingly unaware of how visible he still was to the commander. She wished she could see his face. Shepard closed her eyes and smiled.

_His name was Bill – he had a wife and three kids who lived off-world; they were colonists who had thus far not been hit by the Collectors – and their lives were hard. Bill had joined a merc group in order to support his family, and he had only completed training a few weeks ago._

Bang.

Sometimes the commander liked to imagine what the people behind those helmets were like – she named them, gave them families, gave them _reasons_. Shepard knew that every one of these people were not lacking in depth, although it was far too easy to imagine that it was so – and many in her position did in order to absolve themselves of guilt. Not that Shepard felt guilty over things that had to be done. It was just that Shepard did not need to pretend that these people were nobodies in order to do her job.

When she had shot Bill, it hadn't felt wrong.

And that was why she was confused.

Maelon had a face, a name, a chance to explain himself – and so had Niket. And thus, they had been spared. These mercenaries didn't get the chance to explain. Shepard did not hear out these helmeted people – she simply aimed and shot. It didn't seem to Shepard that Arashu would rely on such a woman to do Her bidding, because Shepard couldn't imagine that her actions were Arashu's bidding at all.

_Siha_.

Thane was wrong about her. Shepard did not protect – she crippled and maimed beyond all repair. She was no angel – let alone one who did the bidding of Thane's goddess. _Arashu – mother, protector_. The Savior of the Citadel had taken more lives than she could remember. Shepard broke things, because she was broken – she couldn't even _bare_ life. She just took it. Commander Shepard was a destroyer.

_Siha_.

The nickname sometimes made her sick.

Bang.

Shepard dealt in death just as Thane did, the differences being that Shepard's actions were her own and a good kill was only a good kill if it _felt_ right. Commander Shepard operated _not_ from logic or some deluded sense of justice, but from _emotion_. The commander was not a bit _detached_. Everything about the way that Shepard killed was _wrong_. Shepard killed because she could, because she wanted to, because it _felt_ right – and how could she be right in the assassin's eyes where truths like these were facts and truths like Thane's were…illusions, to be sure, because the assassin had clearly been blinded by his _feelings_ for her.

Shepard swallowed and pulled the trigger, but this time, it was not the pain of recoil that she felt.

When moods like this struck her, _siha_ raised bile in the back of her throat. But she would never speak a word of it – Shepard would never attempt to correct Thane in his assessment of her, wrong though it would always be. The commander feared too greatly the possibility of dispelling whatever illusions Thane had about her; she did not want to face his judgment.

She did not want him to leave.

Commander Shepard would encourage the lie for as long as she possibly could, because she was as self-serving as she was destructive – and sometimes, it felt wrong. But it was who she was now. Shepard's shoulders twitched as she unloaded her final clip into the last merc that she would snipe that day. Her thighs throbbed, the muscles aching from the strain of continued motionlessness, but she still trotted down the stairs with a bounce in her step.

The lower level of the building was dank and virtually lightless; one bulb hang in the center of the vast space, and its wattage was hardly enough to bring light to one corner of the room, let alone all of it. This was why Shepard and her team had avoided searching the building when they'd initially entered – that, and the alarms had drawn every damn merc on the base to their position.

The commander doubted very seriously that there was anything of import in the area; apart from the alarm, it hadn't even been guarded – but she'd learned that in this business, it was always better safe than sorry. Footfalls echoed down the staircase behind her and Miranda and Jacob were both soon at her side; she motioned for the two of them to split up, and the three of them walked in different directions.

Searching the room was kind of like moving through a maze – there were so many crates and boxes stacked up to heights that went far beyond the commander's own head that it made her a little dizzy. The bulk of them were unlocked and empty, their presence something that only served to confuse her.

A grunt sounded from behind her and Shepard pulled her hand cannon and whirled around before running face first into stacked crates – five of them toppled over and blocked her path. A millisecond later, gunfire echoed throughout the building, which was quickly followed by Shepard's shout as she leapt over a crate.

"_Status!_"

Their voices sounded in her ear less than a second apart and she heaved a sigh of relief.

"Everything is fine on my end, Commander."

"All clear, Commander. There was a merc hiding behind one of these fucking boxes. Keep an eye out."

The commander doubted that there were any left, but she kept her pistol pulled just in case.

Shepard squinted and frowned; the darkness had affected her ability to navigate, although it was a situation that was easily rectified – but fixing the absence of light was not the most intelligent thing to do in her situation. The commander calculated her odds, her eyebrow twitching as she ran her tongue over slick, white teeth. These mercs had thus far proven that they couldn't fight for shit; there really wasn't anything to worry about.

With a shrug, the Commander initialized her omni-tool. The crates she'd knocked over had blocked her into a corner that she wouldn't easily be able to work her way out of. The warmth of biotic energy tickled at the tips of her fingers and she pulled, only to be met with another failed attempt at mastering some sort of connection with her new nervous system. The boxes warbled, but nothing more.

Shepard growled and slammed into another stack of boxes with a shoulder, knocking them over just as easily as she had the last. This time, an array of items spilled from them, and the commander's eyebrows shot upwards with surprise.

"I think I'm gonna need you guys over here."

Shepard squatted and turned one of the objects over in the palm of her hand, and the lines in her forehead deepened. A lot of things about this mission weren't adding up – first and foremost being Miranda's intel slip. Along with that, though, these were the weakest mercenaries Shepard had ever met in battle. She had thought maybe that they'd just hit a base that was crawling with new recruits, but now, she wasn't so sure. There was _new_ and there was _amateur_, and Commander Shepard was beginning to smell the difference.

And then there was _this_.

Miranda and Jacob had found her easily enough – and to the former's annoyance, Shepard and Jacob had played Marco Polo while the commander waved her omni-tool around. "_You're going to get us all killed_," had been one phrase amongst the many to be tossed around within the four or five minutes that it had taken the pair to find her.

"Damn, Commander," Jacob's voice called out and Shepard grinned up at him. "What the hell did you _do_?"

Shepard spied the silhouettes of her team from across the sea of boxes and tossed the object she'd been toying with in their direction; Miranda's form moved first, and her hand snatched the object out of the air before Jacob had even gotten the chance to flinch.

"You notice anything weird about that, Miri?" Shepard called out to the pair.

"It's _fake_."

"Yep." Shepard brushed a stray hair from her face. "All of these guns are fake."

Shepard stood up from her stoop and lurched at another stack of crates, the impact jolting through her body as they toppled over and spilled their contents. Miranda plucked another gun up from the pile in order to confirm that it, too, was a fake.

A calculating silence hung in the air, and Jacob was the first to break it. "What the hell are fake guns doing on a base that's used for illegal weapons dealing?"

Miranda snorted. "Leave it to you to ask the penetrating questions, Jacob."

Shepard eyed the both of them, her gaze flicking back and forth from Jacob's silhouette to Miranda's. She shined the light from her omni-tool on them so that she could see their faces. Wisely, and for the first time that day, Jacob bit his tongue. The commander was definitely going to have to have a talk with the pair; ever since Jake had mentioned it, Shepard had noticed that Lawson's behavior toward the man had _changed_.

Now was clearly not the time, so Shepard quickly interrupted the second silence that had passed, this one the result of awkwardness as opposed to deep thought. "Guess we're gonna find out. You think we're good to move out, XO?"

"Yes, Commander. I believe we've found all that we're going to. We could stay here and wait for the others to approach the building, but that'd take more time than it's worth."

"Mmm, that's what I was thinking," Shepard said before she sniffed and shifted on her feet. "But one of you is gonna have to get me out of here."

Jacob barked a laugh, and the noise sounded oddly _startled_. Shepard just stared as Miranda began to force a pathway through the crates with biotics. "Wait…you're serious? What's wrong with your getter?"

_Rude_.

"Give it a rest, Jacob. The commander's been injured." As Miranda said it, she caught Shepard's eye – and the look that the operative gave her was full of _knowing_. Yes, the two of them would definitely be talking later.

"Well, if she'd just slap some medigel on it—"

"Her suit's settings are at optimum for this mission; medigel will be applied when it's needed. Right now, it isn't. There is no need to waste our resources. Stop pressing the issue."

"I'm sorry," the man held his hands up. "I just never expected to see the _Savior of the Citadel_ held back by a couple of _boxes_."

And that hit closer to home than Jacob would ever realize.

"_Fuck_ you." Shepard walked through the path that Miranda had cleared for her and didn't look back at either of them, fully knowing that the two would follow her. The rest of this mission was going to be hell, she knew, so she squelched out what ever anger she had at Jacob for his comments and saved it for later.

_Now was not the time_.

They neared the exit and Shepard stayed back, her arms crossed against her chest. Jacob's omni-tool lit up his arm and illuminated the space he was working in, an orange glow reflecting on all of their faces. They'd locked the door inside and out, a precaution which had paid off considering that there had been at least one merc hidden in the small warehouse. Miranda tapped her foot against the ground and Shepard found the clicking to be an odd sort of comfort; she appreciated that it broke the silence, quietness still something that the commander struggled to be at ease in.

The door hissed open and overwhelming brightness enveloped them; Shepard couldn't help the sneeze that had startled its way out of her, her sinuses tickling as her pupils tried to adjust to this new intrusion as quickly as possible. All three of them immediately flattened against the wall and squatted.

Static shot up Shepard's arm as she reactivated her omni-tool; she checked her scanner and sighed. "It looks like the rest of them are concentrated in the building south of our current location. The other buildings are empty now. Some of the mercs I shot were headed in that direction."

"Sounds like we go south, then."

"Ah, yet another keen observation straight from the mouth of Jacob Taylor."

"Speaking of _unprofessional_…"

"Stop fucking goading each other and move out."

A couple of "aye, ayes" followed her command and they ended up stealthing their way over to the primary building without incident – yet another thing that seemed totally off about this mission, because their "stealthing" was high-tailing it across the field with no cover but their shields. For them, though, doing this wasn't so dangerous – apart from raw numbers, the enemy would have no more of an advantage than they would.

Oh, but that was stupid.

There were so many of the mercs left that it would have been far more advantageous for them to throw themselves at the team; they should have been overwhelmed by now. The trio stopped in their tracks as they neared the largest building in the base, and Shepard pivoted on a foot to face them.

The itching at Shepard's back flared again and she scratched at the sides of her face with gauntleted fingers in order to distract herself from the sensation, her words slightly muffled as she spoke. "This doesn't feel right."

"Tell me about it, Shepard. This mission has been off from the start."

Jacob's only response was to shrug and walk toward the door, his omni-tool already glowing at his side. To everyone's surprise, the door slid open as he touched it; their immediate responses were to dart to either side of the door before chancing a glimpse inside.

"That's certainly foreboding," Miranda's voice called out at Shepard's side.

A part of the commander didn't even want to go in. She wanted to turn around and leave – and doing so would be simple, being that they'd not been met with much resistance in the past hour or so. It was insane; their scanners had to be off or something, because everything about this situation was just _fucking weird_.

Shepard could certainly justify leaving. The only thing they'd found after all of the hell they'd been put through was some plastic fucking guns, and it was to the point where she didn't even want to find an explanation anymore. She wanted go home. She wanted to take a shower. She wanted to crawl into bed with Thane and sleep for a day straight.

She wanted to kill something.

The commander was so frustrated that her knuckles whitened; her grip so tight around her M-6 that it _creaked_. "Fuck this – I'm going in."

All three of them simultaneously initialized their omni-tools, and the commander became immediately aware of the holding cells that lined the walls. That was…strange. They were empty – or at least the ones that they could see seemed to be.

This building was as dark on the inside as the other one had been – but it _reeked_. Complaints sounded from behind her upon inhaling the stench, and though every bit of her wanted to join the chorus, she kept her mouth shut. Shepard kind of felt like she'd just walked into, and subsequently _through_, a wall of shit. The air was thick with it, and her stomach flipped as she suppressed the urge she felt to vomit.

There were a lot of things running through her head – a lot of scenarios. She couldn't land on one that fit. She could smell death, though, and it made the hairs on the back of her neck raise. Her team was noticeably quiet; neither Jacob nor Miranda had spoken a word since they'd first entered, and it made Shepard uneasy.

The farther they walked, the more horrible the smell grew; Shepard could eventually hear little whispers of sounds and movement, and before long, her eyes were drawn to a shape that was near to the farther holding cells. It was a hulking mass that jittered and shifted, and the commander's want to get the fuck out of that building increased by a couple thousand times. She knew that her fear was irrational, but that _thing_ was another amongst the many that didn't make a fucking lick of sense about this situation.

The closer they drew to it, the more the commander's fear blossomed – until suddenly, they were near enough to _see_. Orange glow poured out over everything and Shepard blinked a couple of times before she could fully process anything.

A woman stood before them, and the image that Shepard was met with was far from what she'd been expecting; she felt a brief moment of vertigo hit her as her all of her preconceived notions were shattered. Shepard's pistol was aimed, the trigger cocked, mere fractions of a moment passing, and the woman in yellowed and dirt crusted armor began to speak.

The commander heard no words – her mind was far too preoccupied by the image of the shivering batarian who knelt in front of the woman. Shepard's gaze flickered to the holding cells behind them, and found the source of both the odor and the odd noises that had permeated the air; there were easily hundreds of batarians crammed into the cells and she found it difficult to breathe. So long this race had been vilified, and yet it was her own kind who had the other on his knees before her with a gun pressed to the back of his head.

The level of scorn for this woman that Shepard was experiencing surprised her, but she could feel it burning deep in the pit of her stomach; it wasn't something that she could brush off. This didn't feel right. This woman wasn't _right_.

"What the hell is this?" There was silence where there hadn't been and Shepard suddenly realized that she'd cut the woman off.

"You're Commander Shepard, aren't you?" The woman's voice was deep and ageless, although Shepard suspected that she was middle aged.

"That depends. Who's asking?"

"Theresa Ro—"

"Take off your helmet," Shepard gestured with her gun, the movement as loose as it was flippant.

The woman kept her own pistol at the back of the batarian's head, one hand working quickly to undo the latches on her helmet. The heavy thing clunked to the floor and the "merc" kicked it aside, her boot landing near enough to the batarian to jar him.

"Start talking, Theresa. You have five minutes before I start shooting."

"You're Commander Shepard – I tried to tell the others. I'm the last one…I tried to tell them that you'd help us, if only you knew—"

"From the beginning. I don't deal well with cryptic."

"We're running a cover operation and we aren't with the Blue Suns—"

"No shit – you're in Eclipse armor." Not only were these people _not_ mercs, but they were apparently uneducated as well. Impossibly, Shepard felt even less good about this situation.

"Well, I'm not a merc! I volunteer for Terra Firma. The people you _slaughtered_ did too. We're the families of the victims of batarian slavers; we caught a bunch of them, Commander, and we were questioning them. We were going to use them to find more slavers, and take them down, too."

Shepard remained quiet, her gun still leveled at the woman's head.

Every part of the commander knew that these batarians weren't slavers – the fact that they'd been overwhelmed by these _idiots_ told her that much. A more likely scenario was that they'd raided a batarian settlement and had taken prisoners as some fucked up kind of revenge because they hadn't the skill or the resources to take on something bigger.

A human terrorist group that wasn't a part of Cerberus – that was certainly a new one.

"Theresa, I didn't get to where I am right now by being stupid. These batarians aren't slavers anymore than you're a part of the Blue Suns." The woman fidgeted and Shepard's eyes narrowed. "You shoot that batarian and we're all gonna unload on you. There are others back there – killing this one won't make a damn bit of difference. You really wanna die over this? Drop the gun."

The woman hesitated before pulling her pistol away from the batarian's head and dropping it beside her helmet.

"Good. If you can run faster than I can shoot you, you live."

"But you're with Cerberus now, my crew saw the emblems, and I told them—"

"_Go_."

Theresa startled before breaking off into a dead run toward the exit, and Shepard pivoted on a heel as she brought her arm around to aim between the woman's shoulder blades; the commander pulled the trigger without a moment's hesitation, and the kick from her M-6 felt good. Her forearm flexed and trembled as it absorbed the recoil, and the woman's armored form landed with a dull thud; a groan escaped her lips before she stopped breathing.

"Shit, Shepard – what the _hell_!"

Jacob's exclamation didn't surprise her, but Miranda's silence did.

"Miranda, comm Joker – let him know we'll need an evac shuttle. Both of you just poke around and see what you can find. We'll talk about this later."

Miranda's lightly accented voice filled the room as she followed orders, but the commander was too focused on the man in front of her to note what the operative was saying. Shepard took a few steps toward the creature and squatted before him, her attempt at eye contact an act in futility as the batarian continued to keep his head down. She frowned. "Look at me. I'm going to help you. What's your name?"

"Janak."

"Okay, Janak. Where are you from?"

"You wouldn't know if I said, human."

Her frown deepened, but she wasn't in the mood to press. Shepard would find out when she needed to, and when this batarian realized that she intended on sending them home, he'd cooperate.

"What were they going to do with you?"

"Aren't you going to kill us, human?"

"You're all civilians. You abide by the laws of your government, but what more are you guilty of? What you've done to be here is none of my damn business unless you _make_ it my business, and we wouldn't want that." She smiled at him, although she was sure it was wasted. "I'm here to help."

The man before her appeared to pause in thought for a moment before the words came pouring out. "They raided our colony a few weeks ago. They took prisoners, killed the rest. They've been planning something – they recently got in a shipment of nukes, and they were talking about developing biological weapons, something about a disease that had spread on the streets of Omega that looked promising. They were planning on dropping them, on destroying as many batarian settlements as possible. That's all I heard, human. That's all I can tell you."

"Do you know if there are more of them?"

"No."

"Well, Janak, we've killed every human that was on this base unless you're hiding any of them back there with you." Shepard leaned out of her squat and held her hand out to the batarian. "Stand up for me. We're gonna get you out of here."

Her hand went ignored and the batarian braced his own hands on his knees to pick himself up, and as he walked over to the holding cells, Shepard began to lose herself again. This whole situation was…well, Shepard didn't know quite what to think. Things like this were not reported on. The commander had never heard of the batarian victims of warfare – she'd only heard the horror stories of batarian slavers and the results of their fucked up governmental system.

The fact that a human political party had funded this mess somehow didn't surprise her, but this was another one of those situations where she was confused by her own actions. These Terra Firma people had only been seeking vengeance for their families, and _revenge_ was something that the commander knew well. She was not opposed to it – had even _dealt_ in it, and yet this was enough to make her heart pound and her stomach feel upset.

Commander Shepard didn't understand; all she knew was that none of this felt right. Thinking beyond that, she couldn't handle. She couldn't justify it. She couldn't rationalize it. It wouldn't make a difference. Nothing would change the circumstances, or what she had done, or what they had done. Shepard couldn't think up anything that would make this situation better – the outcome would never change. Thinking beyond what she _felt_, truly and honest to god _felt_, wouldn't change her into anything other than what she was; she would still be a cold blooded killer, a monster – a _destroyer_.

_ Siha._

Nothing would ever change that.


End file.
